Globant S.A. (GLOB)
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Apr 24, 2026, 4:00 PM EDT - Market closed
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Earnings Call: Q2 2022

Aug 18, 2022

Arturo Langa
Investor Relations Officer, Globant

Good day, and welcome to Globant's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. I am Arturo Langa, Investor Relations Officer at Globant. All participants on this call will be on listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded and streamed live on YouTube. By now, you should have received a copy of the earnings release. If you have not, a copy is available on our website, investors.globant.com. Our speakers today are Martín Migoya, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Juan Urthiague, Chief Financial Officer, Patricia Pomies, Chief Operating Officer, and Diego Tartara, Global Chief Technology Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the comments on our call today may be deemed forward-looking statements. This includes our business and financial outlook and the answers to some of your questions.

Such statements are subject to the risk and uncertainties as described in the company's earnings release and other filings with the SEC. Please note that we follow IFRS accounting rules in our financial statements. During our call today, we will report non-IFRS or adjusted measures, which is how we track performance internally and the easiest way to compare Globant to our peers in the industry. You will find a reconciliation of IFRS and non-IFRS measures at the end of the press release we published on our investor relations website announcing this quarter's results. I'd now like to turn the call over to Martín Migoya, our CEO.

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Thank you, Arturo, and hello everyone. Please join me in welcoming Arturo, our new investor relations officer. It is great to be back with you after another strong quarter of growth. I am happy to discuss how we will continue to reinvent this industry moving forward. First, let's look at Q2. Total revenue was $429.3 million, representing 40.6% year-over-year growth and 6.9% quarter-over-quarter growth. In the 8 years since our IPO, Globant has consistently delivered industry-leading growth of approximately 31% CAGR. We will keep to our growth mindset as Globant expands in its geographies, reinvention offerings, and array of platforms. Our commitment only strengthened in today's market environment. We see an increasing demand of our services and perspectives. The competitive landscape presents macroeconomic challenges.

Leaders need to improve efficiency of their current business as well as finding new and better ways to reach a wider audience. They need to make decisions in a data-driven, agile, and innovative way to stay ahead of the innovation curve. We see these challenges as an opportunity. Globant will be focusing its capabilities on the fastest-growing areas of the digital products and professional services industry. We see positive potential in demand. According to Gartner's recent sector forecast, business leaders are focusing on long-term ROI initiatives. These include projects in digital transformation, blockchain, and artificial intelligence in contracts of three or more years. At Globant, we specialize in developing long-term relationships with our clients. We always focus on developing these relationships moving forward and create new ones. To move forward, we are executing across our strategic growth pillars. First, our geographic expansion.

In June, we announced our expansion to Canada with a new office in Toronto. It will be our hub to access an amazing pool of talent and expand our reach to more organizations in the CAD 1.7 trillion Canadian economy. We have already been serving key players in Canada for several years, including EY and Electronic Arts, among others. We look forward to expanding our offering in the coming months. We're also strengthening our presence in Europe and reinforcing our global delivery network. We're excited to announce that we have started operations in Poland. Our new talent hub in Warsaw will be the creation space for over 150 new Globers and will be a great location to continue delivering the best products for our customers worldwide. Our second growth pillar is Globant's platform. Let me share some exciting news.

We're launching a new wallet for digital assets. Within the crypto space, we see great potential with the wider adoption of the Lightning Network. With this innovation, transaction times are nearly instant, and transaction costs are significantly reduced. This makes it more scalable and simple for the general public to operate. Globant will be taking this a step further by enabling people to enter the crypto space without even leaving an app that they already know and use. Our new product, Lightning Chat, is an intuitive custodial wallet that can be completely operated via WhatsApp, the global messaging platform used by over 2 billion people worldwide. With Lightning Chat, users interact via WhatsApp to send, receive, and swap cryptocurrencies. For those of you who have WhatsApp and who are watching this earnings call live, I invite you to try this for yourself.

With your mobile device, scan the QR code you see on your screen, and we will even give you some free Satoshis for the first ones to try out this new product. Finally, our third growth pillar. Our studio offering. We're launching three new studios. The Automotive and Retail Reinvention Studios aim to help our clients transform these industries. Also, our new Fast Code Studio will bring together our platforms to deliver better and faster services. Our CTO, Diego Tartara, will later go into detail. Now to blockchain. The blockchain technology market is estimated to reach $1.4 trillion in size by 2030, and we believe that we will drive business growth in the future with security, scalability, efficiency, and transparency. To address this trend, our latest Sentinel Report goes through how blockchain technology is reinventing the digital landscape.

We explore the triggers for businesses to best leverage this technology and share impactful applications in various industries, highlighting both the challenges and benefits of blockchain adoption. I encourage you to check it out at sentinel.globant.com. Finally, some thoughts on what Globant is doing to positively impact our world. After achieving our commitment of carbon neutrality last year, we want to take this transformation to our value chain. Through our digital sobriety initiative, we have just put in place a carbon team to measure the positive impact that our digital products and services have on our clients and to help them in their transformations. On top of that, our AI-powered carbon monitoring dashboard provides data-driven insights on the energy consumption of the technologies we built, as well as the ones already in use by our clients.

This gives our clients a greater awareness during the decision-making process of the current and potential impact of their business operations on the environment. We have implemented this program with the Inter-American Development Bank. Through our work with the IDB, they can quantify and analyze the current and potential environmental impact of the projects they finance. As part of our Be Kind strategy, our Be Kind Tech Fund continues to advance in its vision of improving the state of the world through technology by supporting startups that mitigate its negative effects. 900 startups have applied this year alone. We're happy to share that we have just closed our first investment in Ping, a U.S.-based voice platform solution that enables commercial drivers to hear the messages out loud. By providing a solution against texting and driving, Ping hopes to avoid accidents, damages, and prevent fatalities.

With our investment, we are supporting Ping to roll out its patented technology to hundreds of gig economy companies around the world. We look forward to continue this endeavor with our partners and to do more projects with this fund. The Globant concept is based on delivering for all our stakeholders, whether they be clients, investors, or our own planet and society. With that, I'll hand it over to Diego Tartara, our CTO. Thank you very much.

Diego Tartara
Global CTO, Globant

Thanks, Martin. Hello, everyone. I'm happy to be here to share another exciting quarter regarding Globant's product offering and how we are reinventing our industry through technology. First, as Martin mentioned, we continue to expand our studio offering. This quarter, we have two new reinvention studios, Automotive and Retail. We begin with Automotive. Global mobility is undergoing a profound transformation. Software is quickly becoming the value of the car. Through conversational interfaces, drivers have a more intuitive interaction with their vehicles. The greater generation of data from vehicles also creates an opportunity to improve drivers' experience, requiring proper collection, interpretation, analysis, and execution. These changes are adding new revenue streams as car companies implement subscription-based features that can be catered to each driver's unique preferences. As the mobility ecosystem evolves, its global value is forecast to grow by more than $1 trillion by 2030.

Through our Automotive Reinvention Studio, we will apply our capabilities from gaming, data, AI, CloudOps, sustainability, and others to augment the entire customer journey. Even the buying process is ready for reinvention with the Metaverse providing more engaging touchpoints for prospective customers to try out new cars. We have already been reimagining the customer journey with a major vehicle brand in the United Kingdom, creating a scalable global e-commerce solution and a seamless buying experience that transcends the digital and the physical world. We look forward to sharing more about our work in reinventing this industry in the months to come. Second, our Retail Reinvention Studio. For too long, the synergy between the operations and the customer experience side of the retail business has been fragmented. In addition to meeting high customer expectations, there are also multiple touchpoints through apps, brick-and-mortar, and last mile delivery.

Coordinating processes while ensuring a positive and fluid experience has proven challenging, and retailers seek a phygital experience to diversify and expand business verticals. We believe that Globant is uniquely placed to help reinvent the retail industry. We want to enable retailers to transition to a one-stop shop to meet multiple consumer needs and go outside their traditional verticals to create new revenue streams, such as financial products or insurance. That way, they will be able to stay ahead of changes in the consumer demand. On the supply side, they will have tools for complete supply chain visibility and automation, so they can execute in a way that improves customer engagement. Improving connections with customers is Globant's core business, so we're excited to apply this to this critical sector. Now let me share with you a new digital studio that I believe will change the future of coding.

With the rapid pace of technological advancements and an increasing need for more digital solutions, organizations are looking to optimize their software development process. In this context, our new Fast Code studio brings together the power of our platforms to help our clients accelerate time to market. This digital studio will smartly apply our platforms of Augoor for assisted coding, MagnifAI for smarter testing, and GeneXus for multi-experience development in an offering aimed at improving their time to value. It is an accelerated model that incorporates the best of different innovation to develop software. We expect this new approach to be the tipping point of a profound transformation in development. Now, some exciting news about the work we have been doing for our clients. Globant is working with the Los Angeles Clippers as their digital transformation partner in developing their smart venue, the Intuit Dome.

We will collaborate in creating a seamless and extraordinary fan experience through the smart use of technology in and around the stadium, at your seats, and in the palm of your hand. In retail, we see players continue to double down on their direct-to-consumer efforts. Globant signed an agreement with Sephora to be a strategic partner and to provide differentiated and superior consumer experiences leveraging Metaverse, gamification, and advanced analytics solutions. Now to Europe. We're also working with one of Europe's largest banks, which provides services to 15 million individual customers and 500,000 companies. We're helping to transform the underwriting process for small business finance by using artificial intelligence to calibrate optimal risk limits. This transformation has enabled them to speed up their businesses while mastering the complexity of the ecosystem, resulting in an agile and adaptive response to market opportunities.

Another fascinating new project for Globant is our work with Luminus, a social enterprise focusing on enabling access to education for young people, as well as workforce development and wellness through an integrated education ecosystem. Originally established in Jordan, this organization has the ambition of educational growth throughout the Middle East and beyond. Globant sees great synergies with the ideals and objectives due to our own initiatives, such as Globant U and Certified Tech Developer. We are proud to be Luminus' technology partner to make their vision a reality. We are co-developing their omni-channel strategy and the delivery of both a personalized and adaptable education method that can be globally scaled. Now to Latin America, our largest talent market that this quarter was also the source of 50% of our new clients. In media and entertainment, Globant is working with TelevisaUnivision.

We have been directly involved in the development and launch of their new global Spanish-language streaming platform, ViX. This is a key milestone in the company, and we have been working with them with the distribution and integration with other platforms such as Apple TV. In Brazil, we're working with Bauducco, a major food producer and with operations in more than 50 countries. We are creating a modern and robust transport incident and request management system capable of dealing with a large number of partner companies and fully integrated with SAP and carried out through the Salesforce platform. They will obtain greater control of delivery problems, bringing greater visibility, efficiency, and transparency in the logistics process and freight payment. In Argentina, our work for the country's central state-owned company, YPF, has been recognized by Philip Kotler's book, Marketing 5.0.

Globant's solutions using artificial intelligence improved the user experience, drove operational efficiency, and created new revenue streams for the oil company with its own digital wallet. These are some examples of the huge impact we're having worldwide. I look forward to sharing more with you in the next quarter. With that, I will hand it over to Pato.

Patricia Pomies
COO, Globant

Thanks, Diego. Hello, everyone. I begin with an overview of our main clients. The Walt Disney Company continues to be our largest client. As expected, Disney grew 42.8% year-over-year and 2.2% quarter-over-quarter. The rest of our accounts collectively grew by 40.4% year-over-year and 7.5% quarter-over-quarter. Our 100 Squared strategy continued to show results. Over the last 12 months, we had 13 accounts that brought in more than $20 million of revenue, compared to 9 from last year. We also had 233 clients with more than $1 million of annual revenue, compared to 154 one year ago.

Regarding geographical distribution of our revenues, in Q2, 64.5% of our revenue was from North America. 23.8% from Latin America, 9.7% from EMEA, and 2% from Asia and Oceania. Our growth is not only attributed to our new clients, but how we have built relationships with our current clients. Here, we remain committed to improving our net promoter score. For us, it's key to monitor how our clients perceive our quality and how satisfied they are with our overall relationship. It is a great indicator of how willing they are to promote our services among their own networks. As of Q2, the score has reached 75, seven points up from last quarter, and well above the industry benchmark of 41.

Over the last 12 months ending in Q2, Globant showed a net promoter score of 70, four points above the score announced in Q1 comparing the previous 12 months. We are extremely proud of this result, as they show the commitment of our team not only to deliver for, but to engage with our customers. Now, regarding headcount. Our Globant team continues to expand. This quarter, we hired 1,252 new Globers and reached a total headcount of 25,924 professionals, 24,410 of whom are IT professionals. Our IT headcount grew by 33% year-over-year. Our attrition rate is currently 19.9% and has remained nearly flat quarter-over-quarter. The most recent data is quite encouraging. In June, we had the lowest level of headcount attrition year to date.

We expect to see this downward trend to continue over the second half of this year. We are reinforcing our value proposition to create a company that adapts our talent needs, evolving benefits, career development, and flexibility. We will keep on offering different job opportunities for Globers through our open career platform. Additionally, Globant University is constantly growing to provide unparalleled upskilling and career long learning. Globant is also sharing its entrepreneurial spirit and disruptive culture with our external community. So far this year, we have held two editions of Tech N' Fest in Mexico City and Medellín. Tech N' Fest is our event series aimed to advance the conversation on the latest tech trends in a fun environment. Almost 20,000 people registered for the event, making an incredible experience for the attendees.

As you all know, one of Globant's key differentiator is our agile pods, diverse and autonomous teams that interact with our clients to craft the best solution. We launched this methodology in 2012, and it was a critical element in our global scale-up. Today, Globant has a significant amount of experience and data from nearly two decades of delivery for hundreds of blue-chip clients. Through our platforms, Globant University and MyGrowth, we are leveraging this data to measure and improve the performance and engagement of our pods. With more targeted feedback, we can boost Globers' experience at the company, accelerating their team maturity and delivering great value to the clients. Now, an exciting new development for Globant and our community. As we continue seeking permanent reinvention, we want to hear and learn from diverse perspective that can enrich our vision.

The future will be led by the new generations who will drive our world and industry forward, so we want to hear from them to boost inspiration. Therefore, we created the Council of Igniters, the first company advisory board made up of centennials. We have brought together influencers from today's youngest generation who will have a regular dialogue with Globant on the important issues, from the future of work, D&I, education, and other pivotal topics. We are excited to incorporate this dialogue into our creative perspective. This brings me to our Be Kind initiative, which continues to develop. We are back for a third edition of the Women That Build Awards, aimed to recognize and inspire women who are shaking up the gender reality in our technology sector. This year, we will have new categories for technology influencers and board executives.

For those of you joining us this afternoon, we encourage you to share this award with your networks to nominate extraordinary women of today, so that we can inspire the game changer of tomorrow. Check it out at womenawards.globant.com. In addition to promoting women in our sector, we are doing our own part by closing the gender gap in our own company. Over the past quarter, we have been consistently incorporating more female Globers at every level of our organization. This effort is aligned with our target of having 50% of Globant's managerial positions to be held by women and non-binary peers by 2025. One of our key areas in Be Kind is also to help humanity through technology. During the past years, we have built different products to face key issues for different communities.

Today, we are glad to share the launch of our newest app focused on neurodiversity called Emocionalmente. This app is designed to help young people with autism. It enables them to recognize different emotions in others, associate them to everyday life situations, and implement ways to manage them. We have launched this app in Spanish, and it is already available for free on the Google Play Store. This is just one example of how technology can impact humanity for the better. It has been very encouraging to see Globant recognized by our community. Great Place to Work recently ranked Globant among the top 25 workplaces in Latin America, and Fast Company ranked us among top 100 great workplaces for innovators. I'd like to congratulate Martín himself. Comparably recently acknowledged him on their list of the 25 best CEOs at large companies, rated by employees of minority backgrounds.

I'm extremely proud to see that all our initiatives are contributing to a unique work environment. This environment was developed by the Globers throughout our company. We have seen them take the initiative in hosting office gatherings, creation spaces, and innovative collaborations among their colleagues. Their initiative inspire us to recognize some of them as our cultural ambassadors, so that they can take an even more protagonistic role in driving Globant's values forward. We have great opportunities ahead of us, and we continue to strive for be the best place for the talent. Thank you, everyone. With that, I will turn it over to Juan for the financials.

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. I hope you're all doing well. Let me start by summarizing the strong results of our second quarter 2022. I will then discuss our guidance for the third quarter and for the full year 2022. I am pleased to announce that in the second quarter, our company showed a robust sequential acceleration in our top line, best in class EPS growth, and solid free cash flow generation. We posted another quarter of record revenue levels and industry-leading financial performance, while continuing to execute on all key pillars of our strategy. Our revenues for Q2 were $429.3 million, representing a solid 40.6% year-over-year growth, reflecting the strong and resilient demand environment for our business.

On a sequential basis, our revenues for the second quarter of this year increased 6.9% versus 5.7% in the first quarter of 2022, showing a robust and healthy expansion. Q2 revenue growth was 42.1% year- over- year in constant currency, 1.5 percentage points above our headline figure, and over 36.6% year-over-year growth in organic terms. While we continue to analyze the fluid macroeconomic environment, we continue to see technology as a key pillar in every single one of our clients' strategies and a way for them to future-proof their organizations. On that note, we confidently believe we can continue to deliver robust levels of growth and profitability in the upcoming years, driven by the multiyear secular tailwinds facing our business.

Turning now to profitability, our adjusted gross profit for the period increased to $168 million, representing a 39.1% adjusted gross margin. Despite salary increases taking place in our key markets during this quarter, adjusted gross margin was pretty much flat year- over- year, a reflection of the positive pricing dynamics that we continue to see in the market and our focus on profitable growth. Our gross margin levels continue to be within the industry leaders, reflecting the value that our clients see in our services, the technologies that we bring to the table, and the speed in which we're able to transform our clients' digital capabilities. Adjusted operating income for the quarter amounted to $69.2 million or 16.1% of revenues, almost flat versus Q2 2021.

The resilient demand and pricing environment, the SG&A efficiencies driven by our increasing size, along with our increasing exposure to services that help us break revenue and employee growth linearity, will continue to have a positive impact on our adjusted operating margin. At the same time, we will continue our ongoing investments in the company to capture the huge opportunity in front of us. Our IFRS effective tax rate for the quarter was 22.5%, largely in line with our guidance. Adjusted net income for the second quarter of the year totaled $52.1 million, representing 12.1% adjusted net income margin and up 10 basis points compared to the second quarter of 2021.

Adjusted diluted EPS for this quarter was $1.22, based on 42.8 million average diluted shares for the quarter and above our quarterly guidance of $1.20 per share. Adjusted EPS for Q2 implies a solid 38.6% year-over-year growth. Moving on to the balance sheet, our cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments as of June 30th, 2022, amounted to $361.7 million. Currently, our credit facility of $350 million is fully undrawn. Starting this quarter, we will be reporting cash flow on a quarterly basis. Cash flow from operations for Q2 was $45 million, compared to $28.1 million in the same quarter of 2021.

During the second quarter, we generated free cash flow of $17.2 million, compared to free cash flow of $10.5 million in the same quarter last year. As mentioned in our last earnings call, typically the first half of the year has a lower free cash flow as we pay bonuses and taxes. The second half of the year is when we generate the majority of our free cash flow, which has on average represented around 60% of adjusted net income over the last few years. At the end of Q2, DSO was 75 days compared to 80 days for the same quarter last year. We also continue to successfully execute on capital allocation strategy with integrations of recently acquired companies going as planned.

All in, we continue to deliver strong revenue growth, robust levels of profitability, and free cash flow generation, continuing our commitment to deliver consistent and significant value to all our shareholders and key stakeholders. Now, let's talk about our business going forward. I would like to share with you our outlook for Q3 and for the full year 2022. As discussed earlier, we are witnessing a robust demand environment. Based on current visibility, we expect Q3 2022 revenues to be at least $456 million, implying 33.4% year-over-year growth. This guidance figure considers approximately 2 percentage points of FX headwind and 3 percentage points from prior acquisitions.

Q3 adjusted operating margin is expected to be in the 16%-17% range, and adjusted diluted EPS is expected to be at least $1.24, assuming 42.9 million average diluted shares outstanding for the quarter. Regarding the full year 2022, given the overall outlook in market conditions, we are increasing our revenue guidance this quarter, and we now expect full year revenues to be at least $1,775 million, representing 36.8% year-over-year growth, of which we estimate 34 percentage points of organic growth. This guidance figure considers approximately 3 percentage points of FX headwind and 2.8 percentage points of inorganic contribution. Our strong growth guidance significantly exceeds end market growth rates. For 2022, we continue to expect our adjusted operating margin to be in the 16%-17% range.

At Globant, we continue to strongly invest in globalizing our operations, training programs in cutting-edge technologies, and expanding our sales coverage. IFRS effective income tax rate is expected to be in the 22%-24% range for both Q3 2022 and the full year 2022. Finally, we expect adjusted diluted EPS to be at least $5.03 for the full year 2022, representing a solid 33.8% year-over-year growth. Adjusted EPS guidance assumes 42.9 million average diluted shares outstanding for the full year. Thanks everyone for your participation in the call, for your coverage and support.

Arturo Langa
Investor Relations Officer, Globant

Thank you, Juan. Before going into the Q&A section of this call, I would like to turn it back to Martín, who will share with us our new Globant campaign. Martín, please go ahead.

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Thank you, Arturo. And thank you everyone for participating today. It would be great to show you a little bit of what we are doing in terms of spreading our brand and spreading our word. Please go ahead with the reproduction of the commercials that we have been launching exactly yesterday, I think. Go ahead, please. Thank you.

Speaker 12

995. Hey. Psst. Chris. 996. What's happening? Mark's about to reach 1,000 slides on the new client presentation. What? 997. 998. Oh, I need to highlight product delivery. Get me an incomprehensible graphic ASAP. The forbidden charts. 999. 1,000. You're amazing. Oh, wait, I didn't save it. Okay, it's saved. Okay. All right. It's all right. There we go. Oh. Meet the future of digital transformation. Globant. Seek reinvention.

Arturo Langa
Investor Relations Officer, Globant

Thank you, Martin. Now as we go into the question and answer section of this call, I will call each of the analysts' names. Please at that moment, unmute your line and make the question. After you have made your question, please mute your line back again. Also, we would kindly ask that you limit yourself to one question and to one follow-up. With that in mind, we'll go to the first question on the lineup. Tien-Tsin Huang from JPMorgan, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Tien-Tsin Huang
Analyst, JPMorgan

Great. Thank you, Arturo. Good growth here as usual. I wanted to ask, if you don't mind, just on visibility, the question I'm sure everyone's gonna focus on. I'm asking because I'm thinking about the growth, obviously very good. The level of upside is more consistent with what we saw last quarter, but not quite as high as what we saw during the pandemic. But again, more consistent with what we saw pre-pandemic. I'm curious around, you know, visibility and if you've changed your philosophy on guidance at all now that we have a little bit more of a pattern coming off the pandemic. Thank you.

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

Let me take the second part of the question. In terms of philosophy, as we have been saying since the beginning of the year, the pandemic is over, and because of that, we were going to start guiding the same way that we used to guide prior to the pandemic. You know, trying to provide that guidance to the market that, you know, we feel confident that we can achieve or hopefully slightly exceed, as it has been the case over the last three quarters. As we said at the beginning of the year, you know, we are guiding with the same philosophy that we had since the IPO in 2014.

As you know, during the pandemic, because there was so much, you know, volatility and so many things going on, it was harder to guide with, you know, economies opening and closing, very quick. We did say very clearly at the beginning of the year, and we continue to say going forward that our guidance philosophy will be the same that we have had since our IPO in 2014 until the pandemic. As for the visibility, I will probably let Martín.

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Yeah. Thank you, Juan. Thank you, Tien-Tsin , for the question. Visibility is still very good. I mean, most of our customers are in good shape, and that's very important. If there's a recession, it's difficult for us to see exactly where it's coming, in which sectors. Although we have seen some sectors on the high tech space that are suffering a little bit, we see some others that are, you know, going very good. Our largest customer, Disney, is having, you know, a good moment in terms of growth of their. They surpass Netflix in terms of monthly subscribers of the whole set of platforms that they have. That's very encouraging. Parks still are, you know, going great.

Our growth, as we said with Disney, it was slower during the second quarter, but it's already showing signs of going faster on the third quarter. Visibility keeps on being quite good, and our exposure to those potential areas of problems on a potential recession is not that high neither. Overall it's good. I don't know if you want to do the follow-on to clarify anything.

Tien-Tsin Huang
Analyst, JPMorgan

Okay. No, that's perfect, Martin. Thank you for that. I was gonna ask Patricia a little bit more about attrition, but I had to ask, if you don't mind, on the crypto, the wallet. Let me ask about the wallet, right? That's a little bit different. It sounds like Globant will own that product and go directly with customers or consumers with that product. Did I hear that correctly?

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

No.

Tien-Tsin Huang
Analyst, JPMorgan

Is this sort of a new idea for, you know, for the company? You also talked about the autism thing, which was really interesting to see a little bit more direct consumer offerings from Globant.

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Now look, I mean, I hope you have read the QR and get the Satoshis. Having said that, it would be great to clarify this. We are always thinking about new ways of interaction. We feel that the crypto space also needs a kind of a reinvention in terms of how it interacts with consumers. What we're presenting today is a platform that could be used by any of our customers in case they need. This is a closed beta, you know, test, and it's not involving a massive amount of customers. I was getting a report about 65 people, you know, downloaded the QR. That's the maximum of 100. It's a very close limited trial test.

Again, we will keep on thinking about our philosophy of having these platforms for those that really want to get into the game. You know, we thought it was a very good idea to show it in this way, like, you know, live. I mean, giving up some Satoshis so you can play with it, check with WhatsApp what you can do. You can exchange them. We're using the service of an exchange on the back end of Ripio. You can exchange that from Satoshis to USDC. You can ask for a small bill or a check to send it to any of your friends over WhatsApp. That other person will be able to cash in those Satoshis.

You can send it in the format of send $1, you don't know how many Satoshis you are sending, but yeah, you're sending $1 to the other person, which is the most important part. Then at the moment the other person cash it in, the Satoshis get converted at that specific exchange rate. It's a pretty interesting interface. In the moment you receive those Satoshis, you have a new crypto wallet pretty much without the effort of doing anything. If you type address to the bot, it will tell you the Bitcoin address that you have to top up your wallet if you want. It's a pretty impressive interface. We thought it was a good idea to show it this way.

Our philosophy remains the same, doing platforms for our customers in case they need it, but not entering 100% into the B2C space.

Tien-Tsin Huang
Analyst, JPMorgan

Got it. No, it's fun to see the customer experience live, so I appreciate that, guys. Thank you.

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Welcome. Thank you very much for your question.

Patricia Pomies
COO, Globant

Thank you.

Arturo Langa
Investor Relations Officer, Globant

Thank you very much, Tien-Tsin . Our next question comes from Ryan Potter of Citi. Ryan, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ryan Potter
Analyst, Citi

Hey, thanks for taking my question, and I guess I'll take the attrition question. Can you give some details on how attrition's been trending recently, maybe some color on how it's been trending in July? And does it continue to be concentrated largely in Argentina? And I guess, can you provide some more details on how Argentina attrition itself has been improving and how you expect attrition to kind of play out the rest of the year?

Patricia Pomies
COO, Globant

Hi. Well, we see that as we mentioned, I mean, attrition remain flat as we mentioned in the last quarter. The good news that we are seeing a really good number in June and July. We think that we are going to continue with it, that downward trend for the second half of the year. Attrition Argentina, I mean, is stable this last two month also, and I think that is the trend. Of course, the rest of Latin America, you know that it is still a kind of hot market, but we are very stable because we continue to have very solid value proposition for our employees. In fact, the last pulse interview that we made to all our Globers made a great result that I feel very comfortable working in Globant.

They feel very good emotionally and spiritually and of course working in Globant. I think that is the way we like to do it. I mean, trying to bring more career path, more opportunities, and improve our value proposition in terms of the career that they want to do in a company like Globant. I think that answering your question, I mean, we see that one, it's going to be down, I mean, in the second half. That is what we expect, of course.

Ryan Potter
Analyst, Citi

Got it. That's good to hear. Then I guess just touching on the Latin America demand environment, I believe you mentioned you saw some strong new logo growth in Latin America. I was just wondering if you could kind of broadly discuss some of the trends you're seeing in the Latin America demand market. Is this an active focus currently, and do you expect Latin America as a percent of revenue to kind of increase over time?

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Yeah. Thank you for the question. Latin America for us is like our home, and we believe that the brand of Globant in Latin America is a very strong brand. I want to use that. I mean, we have been building this brand for the last 19 years, and I believe that the response we're seeing from the customers and the needs that are being increased by the demand is really interesting. We don't want to walk away from that opportunity. We are investing a lot in growing Latin America. We will keep on growing.

I cannot say that percentages will change, but yes, I can say that we're very serious about how to help our customers, how to help reinvent the whole, you know, set of customers that we have in Latin America. I'm very bullish about what's happening in that specific region.

Ryan Potter
Analyst, Citi

Great. Thank you. Like the commercials, by the way. Great job.

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Thank you so much.

Patricia Pomies
COO, Globant

Thank you.

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

We need your feedback, by the way.

Arturo Langa
Investor Relations Officer, Globant

Thank you, Ryan. Our next question comes from Zachary Ajzenman from Cowen. Zach, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Zachary Ajzenman
Vice President and Equity Research Analyst, Cowen

Hi, thanks. This is Zach on for Bryan Bergin . First question is a macro one. Any sense that clients are treating 2023 potential spending differently at this juncture?

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Very difficult to answer that question. We are not seeing that right now. That's all I can say. We're not seeing that right now in any of our customers. But I don't know. You never know what's gonna happen. I believe that even in a complicated environment that it could be. I would say that the demand for what we do will remain very strong. I was very, you know, specific on that on my speech, my initial speech. Why? Because these guys will keep on needing technology, and I still believe that technology is the largest possible driver for improvement of efficiency and improvement and winning market share in pretty much all the industries.

I believe that that's a pretty solid trend that won't change, and Globant will benefit from that. Let's see how it evolves. We are not seeing now any specific effect on the planning of next year.

Zachary Ajzenman
Vice President and Equity Research Analyst, Cowen

Got it. The follow-up's on top client here at Disney. Some new leadership appointments, specifically in its streaming unit. Can you kinda characterize the current conversations with the counterparts in the business? What gives you the confidence? It sounds like there's some re-acceleration. What gives you the confidence that this is sustainable, and is the expectation that it will return to grow in line with the company average in the second half of the year?

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Yeah. I believe that, well, Disney is a great company, and we are great partners with them, and we have been working with them for more than 10 years. The stakeholders that we are seeing on the streaming side are not new in the company, and we know them. I believe that the investment on the streaming platform will keep on being and keep on growing. Not just that, but also going into other areas. I believe that maybe they will be going into the Metaverse, they will go into the NFT space, they're going to many other places.

That's why I'm positive about the evolution of that customer, specifically that customer in terms of what they want to do. The success, as I said, is so large that now they have more subscriptions than Netflix. You know, when I saw that news, I said, "Okay, yeah, right." You know, everything is about the quality of the content, and this is exactly what's happening, and that's why I'm so excited about what's going on in Disney in terms of the evolution of their business. Of course, that will drive more and more things for us to do. Of course, we don't have the crystal ball here, but I'm very optimistic about the overall situation that Disney is living right now.

Zachary Ajzenman
Vice President and Equity Research Analyst, Cowen

Good to hear. Thank you.

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Thank you very much.

Patricia Pomies
COO, Globant

Thank you.

Arturo Langa
Investor Relations Officer, Globant

Thank you so much, Zach. Our next question comes from Maggie Nolan from William Blair. Maggie, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Maggie Nolan
Equity Research Analyst, William Blair

Hi, how are you?

Patricia Pomies
COO, Globant

Hi, Maggie.

Maggie Nolan
Equity Research Analyst, William Blair

Can you give us a little bit more color, Juan, on the expectations for the impact of things like salary increases and price increases and foreign currency on the margins in the back half of the year?

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

Sure. Hi, Maggie, how are you? You know, there are like multiple pieces going on there. On the salary front, we have been increasing salaries during the second quarter, and we will have some other increases in the last part of the year. At the same time, we have been increasing our revenue per head consistently over the last 18 months, and we have been able, at the same time, to maintain our gross margins pretty much, you know, north of 39%, which is a very healthy level. We continue to see gross margin in the historical 38%-40% range, so we don't see a lot of variation there.

We do believe we will be able to offset any incremental salary increase that we may have over the rest of the year. That's on the salary. There was another part of the question, Maggie. Salary and pricing and something else you mentioned, I think.

Maggie Nolan
Equity Research Analyst, William Blair

Salary, pricing, foreign currency.

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

Foreign currency, okay.

Maggie Nolan
Equity Research Analyst, William Blair

The other fixed.

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

On the foreign currency, you know, we have two different situations there. One, on the top line, and we are losing revenue because of how the FX is playing in Latin America and also in Europe. For the second quarter, our growth would have been 42.1%, you know, if it wasn't for the FX changes that we have seen. For the guidance for the year, you know, we guided for the full year 36.8%, and that includes 3 percentage points of negative FX impacts, so we could have ended guiding 39.8%. That's on the top line. It's a negative impact.

On the margins, you would have expected that to be positive, and that is the case, but we are reinvesting that additional money, you know, getting ready for 2023, expanding our business into new locations. You know, so far this year, you know, we opened places like Poland, places like Canada, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and we plan to keep on expanding our operations. We have been also investing in our studio offering, and Diego has been talking about that, during the call and also in prior calls, and we will continue to do that. Any efficiencies that we are getting from the FX on the cost side are being reinvested, but we are losing some on the top line.

Maggie Nolan
Equity Research Analyst, William Blair

Okay. That's really helpful. Thanks. As you think about, you know, the back half of the year and the overall demand environment, you know, are there any differences between your end verticals, the industries that you serve, and how those clients are thinking about budgets or any kind of differences in terms of how you expect those verticals to perform, maybe which you expect to be the strongest?

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

As I said, you know, our exposure to those segments which are more impacted right now, which is basically big tech, we have a large customer there, which is Google, and we haven't seen any impact on that specific account. On the other side of the others, they are our customers, but we don't have such a huge, you know, exposure, so we're not at all concerned about that. On the rest of the segments, I'm seeing very positive trends. I mean, on the financial sector, on the travel and leisure, on the entertainment space, on the CPG, on pharma. On all of those, you know, segments, I don't know if I'm forgetting anything here.

All of those segments, we're seeing very strong demand. Of course, you know, demand is not, you know, the same as it used to be in the first half of 2021. It was, like, crazy. It didn't came back to the pre-pandemic level. We're above the pre-pandemic level, below the, I would say, the mid portion of the pandemic side. That's the overall, you know, situation that we are seeing, Maggie. I don't know if you want me to clarify on any other, you know, specific area.

Maggie Nolan
Equity Research Analyst, William Blair

No, that was very helpful. Thanks for taking my questions.

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Thank you so much.

Patricia Pomies
COO, Globant

Thank you.

Arturo Langa
Investor Relations Officer, Globant

Thank you, Maggie. Our next question comes from Surinder Thind from Jefferies. Surinder, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Surinder Thind
Equity Research Analyst, Jefferies

Thank you. A follow-on question about the guidance. When I think about the 3Q guide, and then I kind of back into the 4Q numbers, it looks like you're generally maybe higher than average historical growth rate there on a quarter-over-quarter basis, especially given the lower day count. Can you talk about that a little bit? Is there perhaps a large project that's signed that you're expecting to go in 4Q? Or how should we think about the dynamic of 3Q versus 4Q given

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

Yeah

Surinder Thind
Equity Research Analyst, Jefferies

the growth rates?

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

Yeah. Thank you, Surinder, for the question. Yes, on Q4, the implied growth quarter-over-quarter is a little bit higher than the one that you have in Q3. That is driven by certain large projects that are, you know, ramping up and are gonna be, like, at full speed in the fourth quarter. That's why the expectation of a stronger than maybe the average quarter for Q4 is, you know, what we are guiding at this point.

Surinder Thind
Equity Research Analyst, Jefferies

Related to that, was that just simply a timing issue of certain projects being pushed into 4Q, or was that just the way the timing worked out?

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

No, it's just the way it worked. You know, different deals happening at the same time and ramping up, you know, at different moments. That's why some of them are showing mostly towards the last part of Q3, and some are starting in October, and we're already getting ready for that. That's why we are seeing a little bit of higher growth in Q4.

Surinder Thind
Equity Research Analyst, Jefferies

Got it. A related question in terms of, there was an earlier discussion about a lot of new client, new growth in Latin America. When you think about these new relationships, are you approaching them from a dollar denomination perspective? Or, you know, given that, a lot more of your revenues are denominated dollars than the geographic footprint of those revenues.

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

Yeah. Typically, in many countries, we continue to close contracts in Latin America in U.S. dollars. There are a few exceptions, but those are exceptions to the rule. Most likely, we will typically sign up a contract in dollars with our rates in dollars.

Surinder Thind
Equity Research Analyst, Jefferies

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's it for me.

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

Thank you.

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Thank you very much.

Patricia Pomies
COO, Globant

Thank you.

Arturo Langa
Investor Relations Officer, Globant

Thank you, Surinder. Our next question comes from Arvind Ramnani from Piper Sandler. Please.

Arvind Ramnani
Managing Director, Piper Sandler

I just wanted to ask about the demand environment. You know, you clearly outlined the demand continues to be fairly robust and healthy. Are you able to comment on have the nature of work that clients are prioritizing, are clients moving more from growth initiatives to cost initiatives? Or are some of the larger projects you know basically going through more evaluation or additional levels of approvals for some of the larger projects?

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

No, we haven't seen a change on the composition of the deals that we are doing. We're seeing pretty much the same. Would have been very obvious to us if that would have been the case. Yeah, that's pretty much it. I mean, you know, we have seen pretty much the same type of projects. The speed of closing, as I said, it was not as fast as the first quarter of 2021, but it's not on the pre-pandemic level. It's still higher. This is the overall, you know, idea.

Arvind Ramnani
Managing Director, Piper Sandler

Okay. Perfect. On the kind of talent, I mean, I'm trying to get to kind of gross margins, right? Like, I mean, with the gross margins, I mean, how are you kind of fighting the dynamic of, you know, this bill rate increases versus salary hikes? Is that also having an impact on attrition? You know, how should we think about it for the next 6-12 months?

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

Yeah. Thank you, Arvind. Yes, I mean, we have been, as we have been saying since, you know, the beginning of this year, we've been working with customers on pricing. These are long-term relationships, and because of that, you know, customers understand that in a hot labor market, in a hot inflation market worldwide, we need to work together. You know, we need to increase salaries sometimes, then we need to increase rates also if they want us to keep scaling with them with the quality that is expected.

Again, you know, since these are long-term relationships, you know, most likely the conversations end up well, and we find a way, you know, whether it is with an increase for the overall team, for an increase on a specific project, we agree on an increase in the future. I mean, there are multiple ways in which you can make things work out with each different customer. Because of that, we have been able so far to maintain our margins, you know, pretty much in line, even in a very hot labor market scenario. We expect to continue to see more of both, more of, you know, additional salary increases, but also additional rate increases going forward. Inflation, even though in the U.S. started to stabilize, it's still high in most countries.

That, of course, is something that our customers are also seeing, and we will need to work together to adjust our rates accordingly as well. We expect our margins, you know, overall, both gross and operating and net income to be stable throughout the year. Of course, you know, sometimes, you know, you increase salaries today, you increase rates tomorrow, or the other way around. Overall, I mean, the company as a whole on average, we expect stable margins for the rest of the year.

Arvind Ramnani
Managing Director, Piper Sandler

Perfect. This last question on tax rate. You know, how should we be modeling tax rate for this year? If you can give us color on next year, that'd be great as well.

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

Yeah. I think, you know, tax is a combination of 20+ countries at this point. Depending which country grows faster than other and many other things, it can move a little bit. You know, we typically target between 22%-24% as a target effective tax rate, IFRS effective tax rate. That's a number that we are guiding as we mentioned in our guidance slide.

Arvind Ramnani
Managing Director, Piper Sandler

Perfect. Thank you.

Juan Urthiague
CFO, Globant

You're welcome.

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Welcome. Thank you so much.

Patricia Pomies
COO, Globant

Thank you.

Arturo Langa
Investor Relations Officer, Globant

Thank you so much, Arvind. That will conclude the question and answer portion of our call today. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Martín for some closing remarks. Martín, please go ahead.

Martín Migoya
Co-founder and CEO, Globant

Thank you. Well, thank you very much, everyone, for participating on this call. As always, very happy to report our very good results. Looking forward to see you on the next quarter. Cheers. Bye-bye.

Patricia Pomies
COO, Globant

Bye-bye.

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