Earnings Call: Q4 2020

Feb 18, 2021

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the EPAM Systems 4th Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, David Strauby, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. By now, you should have received a copy of the earnings release for the company's Q4 fiscal 2020 results. If you have not, a copy is available on epam.com in the Investors section. With me on today's call are Arkadiy Dobkin, CEO and President and Jason Peterson, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the comments made on today's call may contain forward looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties as described in the company's earnings release and SEC filings. Additionally, All references to reported results that are non GAAP measures have been reconciled to GAAP and are available in our quarterly earnings materials located in the Investors section of our website. With that said, I'll now turn the call over to Ark. Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, And thank you for joining us today. Let me start from taking a look back to 2020, which we all know was a very different year For all of us, to say the least. In preparation for today's call, I briefly reviewed what we were thinking and what we were sharing during the last year, Starting from 12 months back and then 9, 6 and just 3 months ago. I think it tells an interesting story. February last year still full of hope for another practically normal year for us with 20 plus percent organic growth. Focusing on our adaptive enterprise story and in short, looking optimistically into 2020. Just 3 months later, while still reporting 26% constant currency growth for Q1, we, like everybody else at the time, didn't understand at all Where we would end up and what we would have to do to go over the very uncertain and very fast worsening situation. The situation when more than 30% of our client portfolio experienced some form of revenue impact, We practically had to reorganize ourselves on the fly and to start preparation for a very defensive play for protecting As a first priority, well-being of our people and ensuring continued liquidity and viability of our business. When thinking about the time now, really would like to share again our deep appreciation to the thousands of EPAMers We did everything possible to support each other as a company, to our clients for trusting us with their most critical issues and to our many extended communities Around the world. At that point, we really didn't know how the 2020 would end up for us and for our clients. In another 3 months, to our surprise, we saw the first signs of And client realization of new reality and necessity to start preparing for the future, which will be impacted by such new reality for long enough period, If not for real, it pushed our drive for agility and an urgent need to adaptive enterprise transformation even further. Time was very condensed and made us as a company become much more closely connected by sharing information and making decision much faster than ever before. At this point, we also realized that while our regional plans 2020 will not be in line with our financial performance strategies. Most of these planned changes which we outlined for ourselves back in normal times We'll be very much accelerating from strategic transformational standpoints. During the period, we landed Also several large new logos and started to see that we were taking increasingly larger share of our portfolio across several existing strategic for us clients, which was encouraging. Finally, just 3 months ago, while seeing many new geopolitical Turbulences in locations where we operate and have significant talent presence, we still become comfortable enough to remind everybody again And to ourselves, first of all. The goal is stated 12 months back in our last Investor Day. The goal of turning EPAM into a truly adaptive company. We become comfortable simply because of our realization of how much we advance forward to that goal during this all around very challenging 9 months. Thanks to our investments into integrated consulting, Oipham Continuum Into cloud enabled business transformation efforts and data analytics AI and devtestsec ops capabilities Strongly supported by our engineering DNA and by much more flexible, scalable and distributed delivery locations and delivery models, enabled in turn by our digital talent, productivity, knowledge and educational platform or our EPAM Anywhere part time. We believe all those investments are paying back and preparing us strongly for the future growth. In regard to EPAM Continuum, I would like to mention also that today we see not only recognition of this new service offerings From leading analysts, but encouraging take of the new proposition from a broad base of clients around the world and Across our verticals in insurance and financial services, consumer and life sciences to name a few. Our approach to EPAM Continuum goes beyond our working market, but extended very much into cross pollination of all EPAM capabilities and experiences through network organizational approach comprised of people, tools and shared ways of working. While this work is ongoing and represents a significant portion of our investment agenda, we are seeing strong results today in our current portfolio. Results that are driving higher value for customers and that are enabling EPAM to scale larger and complex program faster than ever in the During last year, we shared several specific stories already. Those included Epic Games story As well as the large healthcare technology platform, which not just became our fastest growing client in 2020, but is already among our top 10 clients Currently, in addition to those, let us share 2 short news stories. The first one Started just over a year ago as a nagel engineering program at a top 10 global property and casualty insurance giant. Since then, EPAM has become the go to transformation and IT strategy and implementation partner, helping the company to transform its IT and digital product functions to accelerate its cloud transformation journey and to position the company for innovation through a combination of the strategy consulting and Engineering Implementation Services. The second is very recent engagement for global retail and wholesale pharmacy leader. EPAM provides full value stream services including product management, design and end to end engineering. The client is building An omni channel Care Management product, including clinical physical services, device and digital elements, And is making full use of our integrated research, experience consulting, physical and digital product design on top of our traditional engineering capabilities. So everything I mentioned is made possible by the ongoing investment in our business, which will remain our consistent And we do expect indeed even higher levels of investments in 2021 to keep pace with our growth needs. Moving on to our numbers and let's start from 2020 results. For fiscal 2020, we landed at close to $2,700,000,000 in revenues, reflecting 16% year over year constant currency growth, which included double digit growth in the majority of our industry verticals. Non GAAP earnings per share of $6.34 a 17% increase over fiscal 2019. Lastly, we generated 4.70 On the people front for the year, we welcome more than 4,400 new net employees to EPAM across our client facing teams and corporate functions. At this point, I would like to remind also that during all 2020, We were very consistently repeating the very simple statement. We strongly believe our position as a leading provider of digital product and For engineering services combined with our maturing consulting expertise is our key differentiator and we are confident in our ability to come Out of this challenging time, a more value based and a result driven company that will continue growing in the post pandemic environment at a 20% plus Organic growth rate again. It wasn't obvious statement especially at the beginning, but we think that What was happening during the past 12 months is very telling. From our practically worst quarter ever with the sequential drop in revenue in Q2 To probably the best sequential growth we saw during the last decade when we increased revenue in Q4 2020 by almost 11% in comparison with our Q3 results. So looking ahead to 2021, we see a market that continues to be very active And one that demonstrates strong demand for our services. With the events of the past year, our clients are adapting to changing landscape, which requires hybrid business Models and different ways of interacting with our customers in the end market. This requires even faster pace of transformation, Modernization of application as well as the building or expansion of the platform that connect and power the enterprise enabled first by the cloud and the need for really for innovation partners. It means that we will have to lead large scale transformation with consulting, Product development engagement with design data monetization and process optimization engagements with analytics Digital technology architecture and custom platform development engagement with engineering and all of those to be led by strong alignment with our clients and some other key platform partners. Regarding market sizing, in the past, we spoke about EPAM positioning in the fast growing digital platform product engineering Which analysts estimate to be more than $150,000,000,000 While we still firmly position us With such a segment, we are seeing enhanced opportunities for EPAM to play in the broad application development and cloud integration services market, which leading analysts Our project team to be resurging in the post pandemic environment. Incompassing a combination of custom software development, Cloud native integration work, technology consulting and training services, and which represents in total over $700,000,000,000 in 2021 alone, we're about 60% of the total global IT services market. While thinking about this in context of near Term demand for EPAM and the lagging effect of the pandemic on our customers, we still anticipate Some continued disruption in few of our customers, end markets and probably longer term damage for certain industries. However, today, when 2020 is already in the past and while we are obviously still not being out of post pandemic time zone and specific geopolitical risks, We do believe that 2021 will be a year of return to 20 plus percent growth organically. With that, let me hand the call over to Jason to provide more specifics in our 2020 results and our annual business outlook, which we're Resume for fiscal 2021. Thank you, Art, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased with our 2020 fiscal year performance, especially given the dynamic environment. Our results demonstrate the durability of our portfolio, adaptability of our people and highlight EPAM's ability to meet the needs of clients even during challenging times. In the 4th quarter, EPAM generated revenue of $723,500,000 A year over year increase of 14.3% on a reported basis and 13.7% in constant currency terms, reflecting a positive foreign exchange impact of approximately 60 basis points. Revenue came in higher than previously guided due to our ability to expand our Delivery capacity in response to a stronger than anticipated demand environment. Revenues also benefited somewhat from the aforementioned foreign exchange contribution. Our industry vertical performance in Q4 produced very strong sequential improvement driven by a higher level of growth from both new work at existing clients and revenue from new customer relationships established over the last 12 months. Looking at year over year performance across this group, Life Sciences and Healthcare grew 24%. Growth in the quarter was driven by data and analytics, platform development to New business models and client investments to improve R and D efficiency. Business Information and Media delivered 16.2% growth in the quarter. Financial Services grew 16.1% with growth coming from traditional banking, insurance and to a lesser degree wealth management. Software and high-tech grew 14.3% in the quarter. Travel and consumer returned to growth and increased 5.4% year over year. In Q4, we saw strong growth from our consumer clients along with solid and improving performance within retail, as clients made investments in response to the dramatic changes in their operating environments. Finally, our emerging vertical delivered 13 1% growth, driven by clients in telecommunications, automotive and materials. From a geographic perspective, North America, our largest region representing 59.9 percent of our Q4 revenues grew 14% year over year or 13.7% In constant currency. CIS representing 5.2% of our Q4 revenues grew 22.9% year over year and 45 2% in constant currency. Similar to Q3, growth in the CIS region was driven primarily by clients in Financial Services and Materials. And finally, APAC grew 39.4% year over year or 35.7% in constant currency terms and now represents 2.9% of our revenues. APAC growth in the quarter was primarily driven by clients and financial services. In the 4th quarter, year over year growth in our top Clients was 16.6% and growth outside our top 20 clients was 12.8%. And moving down the income statement. As mentioned last quarter, we continue to run the business with a cost base that is lower than previous levels. While the lower cost base is driven by operational efficiencies we have delivered across the business, there are also temporary contributors, including reduced travel, relocations and certain administrative expenses producing lower levels of SG and A spend over the last three quarters. Looking forward, we expect a higher level of costs in a post pandemic environment, but anticipate that some of the efficiency benefits may be maintained longer term. Our GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 35.6% compared to 35.2% in Q4 of last year. Non GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 36.9% compared to 36.7% for the same quarter last year. GAAP SG and A was 17.8 percent of revenue compared to 19.8% in Q4 of last year. And non GAAP SG G and A came in at 16.2 percent of revenue compared to 18.1% in the same period of last year. Our SG and A results continue to see short term benefits from the previously mentioned items. GAAP income from operations was $112,000,000 or 15.5 percent of revenue in the quarter compared to $84,700,000 or 13.4 percent of revenue in Q4 of last year. Non GAAP income from operations was $135,900,000 or 18.8 percent of revenue in the quarter compared to 107,600,000 or 17% of revenue in Q4 of last year. Our GAAP effective tax rate for the quarter came in at 16.2%, which includes a lower than expected level of excess tax benefits related to stock based compensation. Our non GAAP effective tax rate, which excludes Tax benefits was 22.6 percent. Diluted earnings per share on a GAAP basis was $1.46 Non GAAP EPS was $1.81 reflecting a 19.9% increase over the same quarter in fiscal 2019. In Q4, there were approximately 58,800,000 diluted shares outstanding. Now turning to our cash flow and balance sheet. Cash flow from operations for Q4 was $159,300,000 compared to $124,600,000 in the same quarter for 2019. Free cash flow was $140,900,000 compared to $77,600,000 in the same quarter last year, resulting in a 133 percent conversion of adjusted net income. We ended the quarter with $1,300,000,000 in cash and cash equivalents. In Q4, DSO was 64 days, the lowest in at least 5 years and compares to 70 days at the end of Q3 2020 72 days in the same quarter last year. We are very pleased with this performance and believe we can manage future DSO levels in the upper 60s. Moving on to a few operational metrics. We ended this quarter with approximately 36,700 engineers, designers and consultants, A year over year increase of 12.8% and a sequential increase of 8.8%, our highest quarterly increase in the last 5 years. Our total headcount for Q4 was more than 41,100 employees, a net addition of more than 3,100 EPAMers from the previous quarter. Utilization was 77.9% consistent Q4 of last year and down from 78.2% in Q3 2020. Turning to results for the 2020 full fiscal year. Revenues closed at $2,660,000,000 or 15.9% reported growth over 2019 and 16 On a constant currency basis. During fiscal 2020, our acquisitions contributed approximately 100 basis points to our growth. GAAP income from operations was $379,300,000 an increase of 25.3% year over year and represented 14.3 percent of revenue. Our non GAAP income from operations was 472,700,000 an increase of 21.5% over the prior year and represented 17.8% of revenue. Our GAAP effective tax rate for the year came in at 13.6%. Excluding the impact of the excess tax benefits related to stock based compensation and On certain one time adjustments, our non GAAP effective tax rate was 22.6%. Diluted earnings per share on a GAAP basis was $5.60 Non GAAP EPS, which excludes adjustments for stock based compensation, acquisition related costs and other certain one time items was $6.34 reflecting a 17% increase over fiscal 2019 and higher than our pre pandemic expectations of $6.30 In fiscal 2020, there were approximately 58,400,000 weighted average diluted shares outstanding. And finally, cash flow from operations was $544,400,000 compared to $287,500,000 for fiscal 2019. And free cash flow was $475,600,000 reflecting a 128% adjusted net income conversion. Now let's turn to guidance. Given the relative stability as well as improved visibility across the portfolio, we are resuming our full year guidance for fiscal 2021. While we anticipate growth patterns across the industry verticals to vary throughout the year, we expect our diversified portfolio across the business to make certain we have sufficient resources to meet renewed demand. Additionally, we will increasingly be investing in new geographies to support our long term growth. One area of focus in 2021 will be the creation of the infrastructure to support a larger and increasingly global EPAM. Starting with our full year outlook. Revenue growth will be at least 23% on a reported basis And in constant currency terms will be at least 22% after factoring in a 1% favorable foreign exchange impact. We expect GAAP income from operations to be in the range of 13.5 percent to 14.5 percent and non GAAP income from operations We expect our GAAP effective tax rate to be approximately 12% and our non GAAP effective tax rate to be approximately 23%. For earnings per share, we expect GAAP diluted EPS to be in the range of $6.65 to $6.86 for the full year and non GAAP diluted EPS to be in the range of $7.20 to $7.41 for the full year. We expect weighted average share count of 59,000,000 fully diluted shares outstanding. For For Q1 of fiscal year 2021, we expect revenues to be in the range of $757,000,000 to $765,000,000 producing a year over year growth rate of approximately 17% at the midpoint of the range. In Q1, we expect the favorable impact of Income from operations to be in the range of 12.5 percent to 13.5 percent and non GAAP income from operations to be in the range of 16% to 17 We expect our GAAP effective tax rate to be approximately 1% and non GAAP effective tax rate to be approximately 23%. We anticipate our GAAP effective tax rate in the quarter will be impacted by a higher level of excess tax benefits related to the vesting of restricted stock units in connection to our annual compensation cycle. For earnings per share, we expect GAAP diluted EPS to be in the range of $1.66 to $1.74 for the quarter and non GAAP diluted EPS to be in the range of $1.62 to $1.70 for the quarter. We expect a weighted average share count of 59,000,000 diluted shares outstanding. Finally, a few key assumptions as for our GAAP to non GAAP measurements. Stock compensation expense is expected to be approximately $86,500,000 with $22,500,000 in Q1, $20,000,000 in Q222,000,000 in the remaining quarters. Amortization of intangibles is expected to be approximately $12,500,000 for the year, Evenly spread across each quarter. The impact of foreign exchange is expected to be approximately a $5,500,000 loss for the year with $1,000,000 for Q1 and the balance evenly spread across each remaining quarter. The tax effect of non GAAP adjustment This is expected to be around $21,600,000 for the year with $5,100,000 for Q1 and Q2 $5,700,000 in each remaining quarter. And finally, we expect excess tax benefits to be around $51,500,000 for the full year with approximately $24,500,000 in Q1, dollars 13,500,000 in Q2 and $6,800,000 in each remaining quarter. In summary, we are pleased with the high quality results we delivered in fiscal 2020 and are encouraged by what lies ahead in 2021. Operator, let's open the call up for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from Randy Alasal with Barclays. You may proceed with your question. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question and congratulations on another strong quarter. Your Ark, you mentioned that you're seeing some COVID related you're still seeing a little COVID related impact for some of your clients. And I think you said potential longer term adjustments to certain verticals kind of going forward. I guess the question is, how do you see your the post pandemic sort of business mix for EPAM evolving? Should we start to think about verticals that Like FI growing a lot faster than some of your other verticals or how should we think about the mix kind of going forward? Probably when we look at historically, we still have Pretty good level of volatility on quarterly basis and even on annual basis across our verticals. And again, we believe that with Still with our side, which is definitely growing, this type of volatility, depending on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 large accounts, Could be still in place. So it's, I think, difficult to say. And If you look at the quarter by quarter, it was changing champions practically all the time. So I think In general, it would be something similar at least for this year. And there is unpredictability, but some industries which the most impacted By COVID, might actually start to invest even more like we're seeing in retail, for example, or even travels might start investing more To prepare for coming back. So sorry, but difficult to predict. Okay. So hard to tell at this point. Okay. And I also wanted to ask about margins and Sort of specifically your visibility to margin performance next year, how confident are you that the costs that basically kind of Came out of the model in the context of COVID are going to flow back in. I'm thinking of things like travel. I guess the easier way to ask the question is, what would So you sort of outperform margins versus underperform margins next year? Okay. So I think the first thing I would say is that our guide is Expected to communicate that we do feel that sort of the middle point of the guided range of 16.5% to 17.5% or 17% It's really kind of how we're thinking about the business next year. And if I sort of break it into 2 components, we expect that SG and A will go up somewhat As a percentage of revenue, so I think we exited the full year at about 16.4%. I think for the full year of 2021, you'd be looking at something heading towards 17%. And some of that is additional investments in the business and some of that is the return to some amount of normal See in spending later in the year. But you can see that there's still some benefit that results from that because prior to the pandemic, we were running at over 18%. Now from a gross margin standpoint, what we expect is that we'll continue to see strong growth as evidenced by our guide on the top line. We do think that we'll continue to make investments in growing the business. That'll include traditional sort of headcount additions and all the infrastructure that's Required to attract talent and bring talent into the company. But then it also will include an expansion in geographies, Poland, India, Mexico, maybe other places in Latin America and other places in Europe. And so those investments, at least probably in 2021, Have a somewhat negative impact on gross margin with the idea that they're subscale at this point. We need to grow them rapidly. And then as they get closer to scale, they'll have more consistent profitability. And so the guide kind of incorporates, again, a somewhat elevated level of SG and A, maybe a slightly lower level of gross margin, again, as we invest in our infrastructure so that we can increasingly become a much larger and of course more global company. Great. That's super helpful. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thank you. Our next question comes from David Grossman with Stifel. You may proceed with your question. Good morning. Thank you. I'm wondering if I could just follow-up, Jason, in your comment about the geographic diversification, how much of that, if any, is related to some of the unrest In Belarus over the last kind of year, year and a half. And can you just remind us about How a new facility or how it ramps, what is the typical trajectory of gross margin as you ramp a new geography? Okay. Let me, David, start from Belarus because, Yes, definitely there is some influence on what's happening there. Similar like it was very much Impacting how we're thinking about diversification on our global delivery events in 2014 around Crimea and kind of Russian Ukrainian conflict. So then we accelerated our presence in Central Eastern Europe and So, India and Latin America. And during this period between 'fourteen 20, we definitely We are moving to this direction and I think we continue to move to this direction. So there are multiple New dev centers which we are opening and there are different cost structures there. So I will First to Jason to comment on specifics. Yes. So as Ark indicated, so we would Grow more naturally rapid we'd grow more rapidly naturally in some of these other geographies. But Belarus is part of what we're looking at, at this point and we probably will see some employees who may help Stand up operations in Lithuania and may help us grow Poland even further. From a gross margin standpoint, when you start a brand new facility from scratch kind of the way we did in Lithuania, it is going to have initially, you'll have You'll have very low utilization. You'll have additional infrastructure costs that aren't necessarily carried by rates. But again, those are relatively modest In the case of Poland, where we're still subscale, it's got somewhat lower levels of profitability than a couple of our at scale Operations like you would find in Belarus and Ukraine. So that's part of again, it's a more rapid growth rate in those Entities which have a somewhat lower level of profitability. And then David, I think longer term, as we get those countries and those individual delivery centers Up to a more appropriate scale, I think you'll see an evening out of the profitability and the gross margin. Do you have any sense of color? Yes, in general, we expect very similar picture, which we experienced like in 2015 2016. And just how long does it do you expect it to take to get to scale where those margins would look more similar to some of your other geographies? I think, again, there is some slight impact And also sometimes hard to predict at this point because you'll learn on the way. But again, we have much, much more Practical points that we've had like 5, 6 years ago. And on top of this, if there is Most significant impact on margins that it would come from different tax situation changes across the globe as well. So that might be a big impact, but it's completely unpredictable. Yes. I think so David, as Art said, it's Somewhat difficult to tell, but I think as we work through this fiscal year and into the next fiscal year, I think that's when you kind of get to more appropriate scale and again more kind of normalized margins. I see. And then just looking at the evolution This industry, I'm just curious, at this point, do you have any better insight into how the workplace of the future is going to Of all our customers, do you sense that they're getting more comfortable with a more distributed work model so that It would allow you to maybe operate more satellites or just give you access to a broader talent pool In a more fragmented workforce that may not be working in a centralized location, and any insights into kind of How those cost savings get shared with the clients or maybe just too early at this point, but just curious if you have any updates on how this is evolving? I think it's 2 different questions. Like in general, definitely first of all, like prediction of Changes was like multiple years ago. And even internally, we started very specific programs, How to establish a much more flexible environment for people and to support high distribution, but not to lose in quality And how to find the right talent like in any locations around the world. And we started this like practically 3 years ago. And COVID become a real accelerator for these sorts and we felt probably a little bit more prepared Than we expected before. So and that's one part of the story and clearly client by client There are different situations, but for sure there are more acceptance than it was 12 months ago. And it helps to experiment and kind of to build additional proofs for much more distributed model. That's all happened. On another side, when you're talking about cost factors, it also has a multiple I attribute that because there are simple thinking that OHS cost will be saved, but you have to invest more in this Distributed Virtual Infrastructure. Sometimes it's increasing wage inflation because acceptance of distributed model Becoming bigger and actually competition for the talent growing as well. So there are too many moving parts right now to say how it Change the cost model. Great. All right. And just if I could get one more During the pandemic, you focused more on the top 20 or that's where the growth was coming and maybe you saw more opportunity there. Below the top 20 historically has been a pretty important contributor to your overall growth rate. So I'm just curious, you talked about gaining share in your prepared remarks and some new logo wins of larger clients and Gaining wallet share. Should we expect the top 20, is this the new normal for you in terms of Where the growth is coming from or do you expect kind of the same distribution that we saw pre pandemic returning sometime over the next several months? Yes. I think, David, one of the things that's been interesting about this year is that, we've had a number of Customers that have vaulted right from modest revenue in 1 quarter to being in the top 20 within 3 or 4 quarters. And so some of what I think Eric has talked about in the last couple of quarters where clients are feeling the need to really accelerate their investments and rapidly make the investments that allow them to transform the business Means that they move from being outside the top 20 almost immediately into the top 20. And I think that does kind of distort the top 20 growth rate. I do think that you will see some growth from some of the larger customers in the top 20 in fiscal year 2021. And at the same time, from internally when we look at the statistics for new logo revenues and new customer revenues, which are customers that began generating revenue within the last 12 months. We're seeing that those are increasing as a percentage of total revenue. And I think that sort of shows up in the concentration metrics, particularly as we move From Q2 to Q3 to Q4 in the 2020 fiscal year. Got it. Great. And I think like that Top 20 is a change in a lot as well. So some companies which come in exactly from below top 20 and becoming one of them and there are Good level of volatility at the time. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next question comes from Surinder Thind with Jefferies. You may proceed with your question. Thank you. To start, just a question on kind of when you look ahead to the 2021, can you maybe talk about The mix that you're anticipating in terms of revenues from current customers and then from what you anticipate to be new customers over the next 12 months And how that kind of that go to market strategy is changing as it seems like you're getting wallet share and how we should think of that evolution? Yes. So we haven't traditionally forecasted new customer revenues. Instead, we kind of look at the trends kind of historically. But I think as Art pointed out at the end is that we are seeing a lot of customers begin their journey with EPAM And very rapidly move into the top 20. And so again, what we it's interesting, As many of you have noted is that we're already seeing growth again in our travel and hospitality. And it's not because travel has improved, but because There are retailers and consumer goods companies who are making quite significant investments right now to revisit their business models either to Expand an existing e commerce strategy to create one, to find different ways to connect with customers, to deliver products with customers. So you are seeing a lot of spending in that area. You're seeing a lot of spending in manufacturing, again, with more of sort of a digital Connection, and so I think you will see growth in some of these customers that are relatively small for us, but we also have a couple of large Customers that we are expecting high levels of growth from in 2021. Got it. And then in terms of just the overall The other client conversations that you're having, it sounds like clients are willing to start embarking on some of the bigger Projects, can you talk a little bit about that or are they trying to bite off things in smaller chunks and you're just trying to seeing a lot of renewal or the fall on projects, those projects. I think there are definitely visibility to a number of Large programs because I do believe that good number of clients already Kind of analyze what did happen and create Strategy out of this and actually very aggressively moving in the direction to make sure that they Preparing for the next unexpected things which might happen. So I think there are a number of big programs, some of them Much better shaped, but some of them will be shaped during the next 1 or 2 quarters as well. But from what we're seeing, Again, it's a number of big engagement is increasing for us too. That's helpful. And then just final question related to that. How does, I guess, some of these larger projects or the potential for larger projects Impact your visibility and stuff as you kind of look out to 2021. When I kind of look back over the last couple of quarters, you guys have come in well above guidance. I'm assuming that's part of that is just a faster than anticipated recovery. But when we think about the forward guide, how should we think about The visibility into that and then maybe where you end up in terms of Above that, the 23%. I don't know if you can share something which You don't know from our message how we predicted. I think we were comfortable enough to return to our annual Guidance Cycles. And in kind of big Hi, Piyush here. We're doing this very similar like we were doing this pre COVID. And while there are some bigger programs happening, we also have become bigger. So It's in some way very rational from our point of view. So I think, again, our visibility and predictability methods right now are very similar to what we were doing like in pre COVID times. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Jason Kupferberg with Bank of America, you may proceed with your question. Hey, good morning, guys. I just wanted to start with kind of a big picture question. We recently did a CIO survey that showed a meaningful decrease in the percentage of enterprises who believe that they're largely done with their digital transformation And we think that's because they just continue to find more parts of their business that can be digitized. So the runway basically keeps getting longer. And I'm just wondering if that's a You're observing within your client base, whereby the digital journey kind of continues to get extended as the scope of digital transformation efforts So you're saying that based on your research, there are Most of the clients saying that they're already done with this? Well, we're saying there's actually a decline in the percentage of enterprises saying that they are largely done Because the runway keeps getting longer as they find more areas to digitize, and I'm wondering if you're observing that. I don't think we do because like I think it's a so it's a double negative. So it's a decline in the number who say that they're done. So decline in Right. It's actually broadening, okay. Right. Yes. I think we're seeing this as well. It's also very difficult to kind of Talk about it when asking what it does mean digitizing because this is not a very well defined area and Different clients thinking differently around this, but definitely cloud migration and modernization, it's a huge, During the last several years and I think COVID is a huge accelerator of all of this. So and from this point of view, we're definitely seeing much more interest and much more urgency to focus on this. And kind of related to previous questions, which we answered it already too. Right, right. Okay. And, Jason, can you just tell us a bit about the assumptions you're making for utilization and pricing in the 2021 guidance. Yes. So utilization, I think, is fairly consistent with Utilization that we exit with here in Q4. And so we're not expecting a significant uptick in utilization. We're not expecting unless demand didn't come in as expected that we'd see a significant decline. What we are seeing, as Ark indicated, is wage inflation. Historically, I think I've talked about 4% to 5%. Wage inflation in 2020 was probably more in the 5% to 6% range And probably would stay in the 5% to 6% range in 2021. And so maybe a somewhat elevated level of wage inflation. And pricing is again, it's kind of a mixed environment where newer engagements, particularly with the high demand for resources and again, the robust demand For the type of work that we do, it provides some opportunities, but there are probably some existing customers, particularly in Still impacted sectors of the economy who are a little bit less open to the idea of a 2021 rate increase, but are signaling to us that they're More open and quite open to a 2022 rate increase. Okay, makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Maggie Nolan with William Blair. May proceed with your question. Thank you. Following up on the build out of new geographies, Can you give us some insight into the decision process behind what geographies you chose to build out, why you picked those locations and then Your assessment of your ability to attract talent in those markets? Definitely, there is some Preparation for this and for those who are watching us for since IPO days like you remember that we were Very heavily concentrated practically in a couple of countries. And while we still have Concentration in these countries right now is much, much smaller portion of this, so which we prove that We can do it and can scale in different locations. And right now, we're looking at the 2nd kind of degree of geographies, which is not necessarily very new for the global market, but might be relatively new for us. And that's include like our acceleration, for example, in In India, our acceleration in Latin America, but also in number of countries across Our traditional locations. And again, the criteria, usually, There is IT infrastructure there. There are some talent which was built and Attracted by competitors, but also the quality of university system. In some situation, when there is a Kind of natural migration due to geopolitical situation, we're selecting some countries which would be much more comfortable For people who decided to relocate as well. And partially, 2020 was kind of combination of these two things. Got it. Thank you. And then if we take a look at some of your client buckets, the top 2020, there was good growth there, maybe with the exception of the slight sequential decline in the top 5. So Any comments on what's going on there? And then when you think about the outside of the top 10, last year that was a nice growth driver for the company. This year it's Frailed a little bit, kind of the consolidated company growth. So is there any dynamics there that we should be aware of? Or any thoughts about how to kind of reinvigorate that Those client relationships in that bucket as you navigate the recovery from COVID? Yes. So that's fair. So I think that we Still think about the business very much as a diversified portfolio, whether we're looking at industry verticals or customers. And I think Ark said it at the very beginning of the call, which is It's a little bit hard to predict which customer is going to drive the growth with absolute certainty in a given Fiscal year. We certainly are seeing some customers in the top 20 that we think are still going to have high levels of growth. We're seeing a few that are going to slow down. One thing I could call out We've had very high growth with large customers in the Business Information and Media space. We continue to have very significant relationships with A number of those clients who are now very much in our top 10, we think that we might not see as much growth in fiscal year 2021 certainly as we saw in 2020. We've got growth coming from some new manufacturing customers. We've got Some growth coming from some IT customers with more of a healthcare flavor to them. And so again, I think you are going to see A little bit more of a return to the EPAM traditional growth rate in the below 20, but it may not be quite the way it was 3 or 4 years ago, because I do think as we continue to have established relationships with large companies and are seen as a vendor that can get things done inside those companies, You do get growth inside those portfolios. All right. Thanks, Jason. Thanks, Ark. Hey, thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Brinkman with Cowen. You may proceed with your question. Hey guys, good morning. Question on hiring here. So you added a significant 3,000 billable headcount in the quarter. How do you feel the model operated as you've onboarded here the last couple of months? Did you feel like you're at near a ceiling level to comfortably add? And how should we be thinking about the pace of headcount expansion in early 2021 before you scale some of these newer regions? So clearly, we've invested in our capability or our capacity to add additional headcount. And so as we get bigger, as we make those investments, we talked about this is the biggest incremental growth that we've had Yes, Ria, the company, but clearly, we're putting in place a structure that allows us to continue to do that. But clearly, Q4, we're kind of catching up From Q2 and Q3. And so right now, we might not have as much headcount growth expected as we, for instance, entered Q1. But again, we're running at a hotter level than we have in past years, in part because we are seeing that the demand is Strong and we are putting an infrastructure in place that allows us to meet that demand. I think very often the challenge not just to grow, but actually to grow responsibly to make sure that you Keeping balance between demand and supply, and this is always like a trade off. So from this point of view, that's one of the Key kind of challenges which we try to get to know. Okay. I guess following on that, Can you comment on cash position and M and A receptiveness here? How are you thinking about M and A as a component of the geographic expansion? Right. So I talk about this, I think, every quarter and I'm going to add something to what I've said in the past. So the M and A pipeline We're quite active in our discussions with potential acquisition targets. And at this point, We are quite advanced in our discussions with several companies. And so I do expect that we'll be talking more about that in the not too distant future. We continue to have a focus on capabilities, but also geography would Probably play a role as well and it might the focus might be on helping us with kind of end markets, so again, more customer facing. But in some cases, we may use an acquisition to get us an An established position and a management team in a country that we don't have so much experience in. So I think you'll kind of see both of those things in 2020 Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Ashwin Shirvaikar with Citi. You may proceed with your question. Thank you. Good morning, Art. Good morning, Jason. Good quarter here. My first question is, you've mentioned A couple of times larger and increasingly global EPAM. And you provided a lot of detail on that from a delivery perspective. My question is from a revenue perspective, if you can provide specifics with regards to how you're Thinking about future globalization of the EPAM footprint from a revenue perspective, you Continue to have the vast majority of your revenues come from North America and Europe. Any thoughts on diversification? And Jason, your comments on M and A, is that more of a geography focus or capability focus? I'll answer first and I'm sure Arkel have something to say as well here. So I think from a in some cases, the market investment that's Customer focusing may still be in places like Western Europe. I think in terms of longer term expansion, I do think that APAC continues to be an opportunity for the company. As you know, most of the revenue does come out of Western Europe and North America, and we still are, I would say, underpenetrated in Asia Pac. So longer term, I think that's definitely an opportunity. I think you are beginning to see Slightly elevated growth rates in APAC. And I think that particularly there's interesting opportunities in the Singapore market. And so I think Kind of longer term, I think you will see greater revenue, but I'm not necessarily expecting that to show up in a material way in 2021, but more kind of in future years. Yes. I think from general direction, North America and Western Europe is by far the main priority. The rest of the markets which Jason mentioned priority is how to serve our global clients in these markets And establish ourselves a little bit better. And that's what was happening during the last probably 7, 8 years when we came to China because of UBS, for example, and starting to expand. So I think it would be growth in APAC It was with some local clients, but again, it's not going to be really significant. But the growth with the Global clients which we serve in North America, Western Europe and extension to different markets from APAC to Potentially Latin America is well very much anticipated. Got it. Got it. And I think With our size, we have almost unlimited opportunity in the markets where we are. Understood. That's good to know. Ordinarily, I wouldn't pull out a specific acquisition that you did, but I always thought that the Continuum acquisition with integrated consulting that was a key capability set that you guys added. I was curious to if you could shed more light on how that performed through the course of 2020, Particularly given, was it more that the Question in nature perhaps if that was impacted or was it that clients look to you to adapt more so. If you could talk How that how you see that evolve and how you see that affecting your future investments? Yes, Shneur, I think we tried to illustrate today with couple examples. But in general, it's definitely In very trivial statements, say, it's a journey. And We did a number of acquisition to build experience consultancy capabilities. We're building Business consultancy capabilities at this point organically and we do believe that we have a very good Foundation for Technology Consulting Capabilities. And the main point for us how to bring them all together And create in some way the continuum of offering, linking this to engineering. That's why like in the past we Stated multiple times that we're not even looking on specific line of service and consulting to separate from our traditional engineering, but actually the Real strong quarter related. And from this point of view, I think during the last 2 years, we saw Very positive impact. And I think 2020, to our surprise, being in such a strange and Difficult year actually triggered multiple wins where we entered New clients through very different point for us from the past. And in return started Much more significant programs for ourselves with a big potential. And also we've had couple of wins against top consulting The world which are making us kind of much more comfortable thinking about the direction which we selected. So there are Very good signs that it's moving forward well right now. Got it. Thank you, guys. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over. Our next question comes from Herman Ramnani with Piper Sandler. You may proceed with your question. Great. Hey, congrats on another terrific quarter. The demand environment seems quite robust across your portfolio. Are you seeing pricing strength as the overall demand environment improves? Yes. I think there are opportunities with some of the newer engagements, and particularly, you're right, when there's strong demand and supply is a little bit more That produces opportunities. But I think with some of the long standing relationships, it's a little bit more mix, right? It Depends on where they are in terms of their own demand and a lot of people still have some uncertainty. And so we still see pricing opportunity, but Maybe a little bit cautious on the ability to take up rates as frequently as we have in the past. And that's in part kind of What informs the guidance with the midpoint of that range being 17% adjusted IFO. Great, great. And I had a question operationally. How are you thinking about staffing in a post pandemic environment? Clearly, last year there were probably kind of fewer vacations and high levels of productivity, but when you look at the next 12 to 18 months. There could be like elevated levels of vacation and time off and things of that sort. Are you kind of anticipating planning sort of your staffing levels to account for some of this? Yes. Thank you. You touched on this very, very interesting question which triggered a lot of internal debates. Like on our management calls, we discussed if the executive team going for vacation for 6 months or 9 months after this. So But in general, we definitely put in the model a lot of source and we are projecting accelerated vacations assuming that COVID really will give up more than we're seeing right now. But yes, it's one of the moving parts right now. But our Current model anticipated some increased locations after what the renovation will be done. Correct. Great, terrific. Thank you and good luck for 2021. Thank you. I would now like to I'll turn the call back over to Arkadiy Dobkin for any closing remarks. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for attending. Again, we all know how tough was 2020. And we really hope that 2021 will be Different year, while we all understand that this will be a mix of different things. We're looking positively to overall situation and hopefully our next Quarter will be different from the Q2 of date last year when we completely changed the whole have to change the whole picture. So hopefully, it will be different this year. Thank you very much and talk to you next time. Thank you.