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ExlService Holdings, Inc. (EXLS)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 29, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the ExlService Holdings, Inc. Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we'll conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I'd now like to turn the conference over to your host for today, Mr. Steven Barlow. Sir, you may begin.

Steven N. Barlow - Vice President, Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Ben. Hello, and thanks to everyone for joining EXL's third quarter 2015 financial results conference call. I'm Steve Barlow, EXL's Vice President of Investor Relations. With us here today in New York are Rohit Kapoor, our Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Vishal Chhibbar, our Chief Financial Officer. I hope that you've had an opportunity to review our quarterly press release we issued this morning. We've also updated our investor factsheet in the Investor Relations section of EXL's website. As you know, some of the matters we'll discuss in this call are forward-looking. Please keep in mind that these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that are expressed or implied by such statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic condition, those factors set forth in today's press release, discussed in the company's periodic reports and other documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. EXL assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. During our call today, we may reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provides useful information for investors. Reconciliation of these measures to GAAP can be found in our press release, as well as the investor factsheet. Now I'll turn the call over to Rohit Kapoor, EXL's Chief Executive Officer. Rohit Kapoor - Vice Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our third quarter 2015 earnings call. I am extremely pleased to announce that EXL delivered strong third quarter results. We achieved revenues of $163.5 million, representing a year-on-year growth of 26%, excluding reimbursement of disentanglement costs on a constant currency basis. Organically, we achieved strong double-digit…

Operator

Operator

In the interest of time, we are asking that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. And our first question comes from the line of Joseph Foresi of Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Joseph Dean Foresi - Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.: Hi. Good morning. I just had a couple of quick questions here. First, on the 15% organic growth rate, I think that obviously excludes disentanglements. Was there anything else there from the transitioning clients? I guess where can that rate go from here and were there any one-times in the number? I'm just trying to get a better feel for what that number represents. Vishal Chhibbar - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. So this quarter we had organic growth rate of 15.4% and though you are right, there were some one-time benefits we had, especially due in our Transformation Analytics business, where Q3 seasonally is the most strongest, and we had higher project revenues in that. We also had a one-time license sale which contributed growth in our Operations Management. And based on that, I think the Q4 we expect, there will be marginal to flattish quarter in terms of – marginal decline to flattish quarter sequentially for Q4. Joseph Dean Foresi - Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.: Okay. And then, my follow-up, or my second question, just so I get an understanding of the margins. I thought you might have said that there was 150 basis points from currency. But maybe we could just get the margin breakdown year-over-year, and your expectations on what the margin increase would be, currency versus productivity, going forward? Vishal Chhibbar - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes. So on adjusted operating margins, we grew by 270 basis points year-over-year, and we are at 17%. This was driven by FX impact; we had about 150 basis points, so the core growth was about 120 basis points excluding FX. Operating leverage of that was 90 basis points and gross margin impact, net of transitioning clients, was 30 basis points. Like I said, going forward, we do expect that for the full year, we will be between 14.6% to 15% of operating margins, and we will continue to expand that in 2016. Joseph Dean Foresi - Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.: Got it. With about half of that being productivity gains, just to be clear? Vishal Chhibbar - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes. Joseph Dean Foresi - Cantor Fitzgerald & Co.: Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Anil Doradla of William Blair. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Anil Kumar Doradla - William Blair & Co. LLC: Hi, Rohit, Vishal, congrats on the results and great to see the company turning around. So, Rohit, first big picture question. So clearly, 2015 is turning out to be a breakout year, some good strategic investments, changes in business model. So going forward, when we look at 2016 and beyond, without really giving any guidance per se, but what do you think is the new norm of EXL's growth rate? Is this a low-teens growth rate company or a mid-teens growth rate company? Rohit Kapoor - Vice Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Anil. I think one of the most fundamental changes that is taking place in our business that's reflecting in the growth rate is, in the previous quarters, a large part of our growth used to come by just one business segment, which was the Analytics business growing at a very, very rapid pace. Now what we are seeing is that the larger part of our business, which is Operations Management, that has also kicked into high gear and has now demonstrated two quarters of growth rate which has been in the double-digits. So frankly, we've got both our business segments, Operations Management as well as Analytics & Transformation services, both growing nicely. And I think that's what is extremely positive for looking at 2016. The Operations Management business, again, we break it up into looking at our top 10 clients in Operations Management, looking at the next 20 clients, and then looking at new client acquisitions in Operations Management. We're actually extremely pleased that all three segments within Operations Management from this client breakout analysis is…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Edward Caso of Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Rick M. Eskelsen - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Hi. Good morning. It's Rick Eskelsen on for Ed. I guess, just building off of the last couple of questions on margins. I'm wondering if you could talk about where you think your longer-term adjusted operating margins could get to. Do you think we could get back to the 16% plus levels that you've reached in the past? Vishal Chhibbar - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Hi, Rick. Good morning. This is Vishal. As I've been saying earlier that we will be able to improve our adjusted operating margins and, for 2016, we expect that the margins will improve year-over-year and I think we have accelerated some of that margin improvement into this year. So we expect that next year we should be able to improve adjusted operating margins by another 30 basis points to 50 basis points over and above where we will end up this year. But over the long run, we should be in the mid-teens in terms of higher to mid-teens in the long run being our target for adjusted operating margin.

Rick M. Eskelsen - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Thank you. Then just a follow-up. Just wondering if you could kind of help us with the seasonality now with RPM being added into the mix on the Analytics & Transformation side of things, what's the typical seasonality we should be looking for, particularly in the fourth quarter as you move forward for really both business lines, but the focus more on Analytics side? Thank you. Vishal Chhibbar - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, hi. So I think typically Q3 is our strongest quarter for our Business Transformation and Analytics segment. And Q4 we do expect that due to the impact of number of days – working days and holidays, there will be lower impact, lower volumes, from our project business and also in RPM, which is a volume-driven business, and we expect that the volumes will decline in the RPM business. Overall, we do expect that the Operations Management business actually will grow sequentially from Q3 to Q4. Analytics core business, excluding our RPM business, would also sequentially grow. But there will be a significant decline in our Business Transformation and Consulting business of us (40:05) and some of the utilization and volumes in our LifePRO, in our OSI and RPM business will go down.

Rick M. Eskelsen - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dave Koning of Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead. David J. Koning - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Yeah. Hey, guys. Great job. I just have a few here. So, usually EPS is up sequentially in Q4 I think we went back several years and in this year, too, you had a little higher tax rate in Q3 than you expect in Q4. So it just seems like, if we look at any sort of normal trend, you'd have a really nice progression to Q4, but it looks like you're guiding it down just a bit. Maybe you can talk through that thought process. Vishal Chhibbar - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. So I think one of the things which will happen in Q4 is that we're also making some investment in Q4 to drive growth into next year. So we are making investments in robotics and software tools. We are making some investments on employee engagements and we're also making investments in sales and marketing. So I think if you factor that in, combined with the fact that the adjusted operating margins will decline sequentially due to the seasonal factor that I outlined earlier, we do expect that the – as you are rightly pointing out, typically we have had EPS growth in Q4, but this year I think the Q4 would be slightly down in terms of adjusted EPS. David J. Koning - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay. No, that totally makes sense. And then, I guess, secondly, the RPM business has been doing really well. What's kind of the organic growth rate just of RPM by itself? And the reason I ask is I know you're going…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Frank Atkins with SunTrust. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Frank Carl Atkins - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my questions. Wanted to ask a little bit about retention initiatives and the hiring environment on the Analytics side specifically? What are you seeing out there? Rohit Kapoor - Vice Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. I think for us on the Analytics side, number one, we are very, very pleased with some of the branding and the employee – our ability to attract the right set of employees from the premier engineering colleges and the management colleges in India. And so we've got a great employee brand reputation out there that seems to be working nicely. From a retention standpoint, I think this is one area which is obviously growing very, very rapidly and, therefore, there is attrition associated with this business. Our attrition rates tend to be a little lower than the industry. And we are making conscious investments in a number of different areas to try and make sure that our retention rates remain above industry average. So we're investing in a number of employee engagement activities. There is a very clear career pathing that we've established for folks in this business, which is a strong career growth given the strong growth rate of our Analytics business. There's new investments that we've made in the infrastructure and the physical infrastructure associated with this business, as well as I think the investments that we are making to engage everybody in idea generation and innovation, that makes us a really, really attractive place for folks in Analytics to be part of. So we think we would be able to manage this a lot better than competition.

Frank Carl Atkins - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Okay. Great. That's helpful. We've seen some mixed results in the insurance vertical at some peers. I wanted to ask, any areas of strength or weaknesses within that vertical that you've seen? Rohit Kapoor - Vice Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Insurance for us now has become a fairly significant and a meaningful vertical by absolute dollar, size and scale. We are seeing that that business for us is growing quite nicely. However, there have been some transitioning clients, which everybody is fully aware of. One of the new trends that we are seeing in the insurance space, which we are really pleased about, is the expansion of our client relationships with European carriers. And that's giving us an opportunity to expand our business in that segment across geographies and I think that's a very, very attractive opportunity set for us.

Frank Carl Atkins - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Okay. Great. And last one from me. Could you just give us an update on delivery mix, and do you see any changes in that going forward as you look at the portfolio of delivery service? Vishal Chhibbar - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. Hi. I think currently, our major locations for delivery have been India, Philippines, Europe and U.S. And with the acquisitions which we have done in the past, last with the Overland acquisition and the RPM acquisition, our delivery from U.S. has significantly increased. And as a consequences, I think the delivery percentage from India is now at about 70%, compared to maybe 18 months ago or two years ago at which was about 85%, and so U.S. has very significantly increased to about – how much is that, the total (47:55) number – 30%? About 28%, 29% – 22%.

Frank Carl Atkins - SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc.

Analyst · SunTrust. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Okay, great. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of S.K. Prasad Borra of Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

S.K. Prasad Borra - Goldman Sachs International

Analyst

Thanks for taking my question. A couple, if I may. First, probably on Operations Management, you talked about some one-time benefits from license growth. Can you elaborate on that? Are you seeing some more momentum on license growth, given the new products you are coming out with? Rohit Kapoor - Vice Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Sure. What we have done, S.K., is that we've actually invested in upgrading our technology platforms significantly. And so, for example, we introduced a new version of LifePRO 17 that got rolled out, and we are preparing to work on LifePRO Version Number 18. Similarly, we have upgraded our technology platform in CareRadius, which is CareRadius 3.0. And what we are doing is, we are embedding analytics and data visualization as key new attributes in these technology platforms. And I think the addition of these elements is resonating quite nicely in the marketplace. And so we are seeing growth take place here. While we continue to make the shift towards BPaaS using these technology platforms, the standalone license sales continue to take place, and those are going to be lumpy, and they are going to be – I guess, they'll fall when they fall, and we did have a good quarter in Q3 from those license sales.

S.K. Prasad Borra - Goldman Sachs International

Analyst

Okay. That's great. And in terms of the focus you have on the verticals, obviously insurance seem to be doing much better than others, but you've also talked about healthcare quite a lot over the last few quarters. What's been the momentum in healthcare and, both from an organic investment perspective and also acquisitions, what's your latest thinking on that? Rohit Kapoor - Vice Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Sure. I think we continue to think that healthcare is a very, very attractive opportunity. I think our business in healthcare continues to grow very, very strongly, and the growth rate of our healthcare business is much higher than the corporate average, and it's one of our fastest-growing industry verticals. The part that we are pleased about in healthcare is that we've broadened out our growth across multiple clients and multiple different types of processes and capabilities. So that's been very encouraging. There's also been a tremendous amount of traction that has built up around analytics and healthcare. And again, some of the work that we are doing around payment integrity and claims overpayment, these are very, very large and rich opportunity sets for us, and I think that's progressing very nicely.

S.K. Prasad Borra - Goldman Sachs International

Analyst

Okay. That's great. Good set of results. Thanks, Rohit. Thanks, Vishal.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And once again, ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Our next question comes from the line of David Grossman of Stifel. Your line is open. Please go ahead. David M. Grossman - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Thank you. So, Rohit, you mentioned the optimization of pricing, both in your comments about the Operations Management business as well as the Analytics business. Can you help us better understand what you mean by that, and how sustainable these pricing actions are as we go into next year? Rohit Kapoor - Vice Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Sure, David. I think one of the things which we have seen is that there has been a movement away from an FTE-based pricing model towards transaction-based pricing and outcome-based pricing model. And it's really – as we move towards these different types of engagement models, our ability to understand the appropriateness of pricing and being able to price them at the right price points, that becomes a critical judgment factor. And as we experience more of these clients, our ability to hone in our skills associated with that becomes a lot better. The other thing is, when we go in for pricing, which is on an outcome-based pricing model, it does takes us some time to be able to get to the right levels of productivity and get to the right levels of profitability associated with these contracts. And we've been able to do that. So frankly, we think the changes that we've made out here, these are sustainable changes and these would carry forward as we go into 2016. David M. Grossman - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: So is there any way you can disaggregate the unit growth versus pricing growth that you're seeing in the two segments? Rohit Kapoor - Vice Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: It's very difficult for us to do that because the price realization increase that takes place on transaction-based or outcome-based is all pooled together in terms of the revenue. It's very difficult to break it out between volume and price. David M. Grossman - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Okay. And then just secondly on just the backlog. Can you give us any sense on the Operations Management side what the backlog looks like at the end of September versus what it looked like at the end of September last year?