Earnings Labs

Genpact Limited (G)

Q1 2012 Earnings Call· Wed, May 2, 2012

$33.77

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the First Quarter 2012 Genpact Ltd. earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will be facilitating a question-and-answer session towards the end of this conference. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today’s call, Mr. Shishir Verma, Head of Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Shishir Verma

Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Erica. Welcome, everyone, to Genpact’s earnings call to discuss our results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2012. With me I have Tiger Tyagarajan, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mohit Bhatia, our Chief Financial Officer. Our agenda for today is as follows. Tiger will begin with an overview of our results in relation to our long-term strategy with the perspective on the current environment. Followed by Mohit, who will discuss our financial performance in greater detail, and then Tiger will have some closing comments. Finally Tiger and Mohit will be available to take your questions. We expect the call to last about an hour. Please note that some of the matters we will discuss today are forward-looking. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to general economic conditions and those factors set forth in our press release and discussed under the risk factors section of our annual report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings. Genpact assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. In our call today we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe provide additional information for investors and better reflect the way management views the operating performance of the business. You can find a reconciliation of these measures to GAAP as well as related information in our news release on the Investor Relations section of our website, Genpact.com. Please also refer to the investor fact sheet on the front page of the IR section of our website for further details on our quarter results. With that, let me turn the call over to Tiger. NV “Tiger”…

Mohit Bhatia

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Tiger, and good morning, everyone. Today, I will review our first quarter performance, followed by a summary of key highlights on the balance sheet and statements of cash flow. We closed the first quarter of 2012 with net revenues of $435.5 million, an increase of 31.7% year-over-year and 13.4% excluding Headstrong, which we acquired in May of 2011. Business process management revenue increased 15% driven by a strong global client BPM growth of 20% within which Smart Decision Services grew 61%. In addition, our IT business continues to gain momentum, growing 18% this quarter, excluding Headstrong and a 148% on a reported basis. Within this category, our global clients IT business grew 33% and the GIT business grew 6%. Global clients continued to be our growth engine. Global clients revenue increased 46.6% in the first quarter or 18.9% excluding Headstrong and represented 73% of Genpact’s total revenue. Growth was driven by strong demand for nearly all major service lines and industries including SDS, banking and insurance operations, IT and finance and accounting and all industry verticals. We also saw double digit growth across all major geographies including the U.S. with particularly strong growth in Asia-Pacific and Europe. Revenue from GE in the first quarter totaled $116 million, up 3% year-over-year driven by growth from smart decision services and IT. In the first quarter, revenue from GE represented 27% of our overall revenues. Our expectation for the full year is that GE will continue to grow in flat to low single digits. You would have notice a slight change in how our financial statements are presented, where revenue from GE are no longer shown to be from a related party. This is simply due to U.S. GAAP Accounting Standards on stock ownership and how revenue is characterized. Our relationship…

Mohit Bhatia

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Tiger. NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: Thank you.

Mohit Bhatia

Chief Financial Officer

Erica, could you please open the floor for questions?

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Joe Foresi with Janney Montgomery Scott. Please proceed. Jeff S. Rossetti – Janney Montgomery Scott LLC: Well, this is Jeff Rossetti in calling on behalf of Joe, thanks for taking my question. I was just wondering Mohit, would it be possible to find out exactly what was the organic growth for BPO, excluding EmPower and also the growth rate for Smart Decision Services excluding EmPower?

Mohit Bhatia

Chief Financial Officer

So, the EmPower acquisition was actually very, very small. In our own measurements, we don’t even measure that separately. Our organic growth for the first quarter was 13.4%. I suspect if I would remove EmPower, it would be like 13.3%, it was very marginal and non-material to our numbers. Jeff S. Rossetti – Janney Montgomery Scott LLC: Okay. And could you maybe also talk about the how Headstrong is progressing with (inaudible) and others. Tiger had mentioned the challenging market in the investment banking just try see how that business is performing?

Mohit Bhatia

Chief Financial Officer

Sure. The first quarter results of Headstrong are very satisfactory, given the fact that one of their clients had filed for bankruptcy towards the end of last year. The fact that Headstrong in first quarter came in flat, compared to last year despite losing the clients is something that is very satisfactory. I think like Tiger, a little bit of fact the uncertainty remains in capital markets, there is pressure on discretionary spends from a lot of the investment banks. While that is the risk, the opportunity really is that these financial institutions and banks are also looking for partners who can help them try and variabilize their cost base and to help them with more transformative end-to-end improvements that would make them more effective. NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: A couple of other points that I would add to what Mohit said clearly discretionary spend is coming under scrutiny, at the same time, the intensity of dialogue around larger transformative engagements has gone up. And with our process expertise and our reengineering capacities, I think, we are very well positioned to have those dialogues. We continue to win a large number of analytics and smart decision services, cross-sell engagements. And the last point I would make is, the addition of that leadership team to the company has really helped us drive technology, our technology business, our IT business in a forward direction, and which is why we’re beginning to see growth in that business after many years of not more than probably single-digit growth. Jeff S. Rossetti – Janney Montgomery Scott LLC: Okay. Thank you. And I can just squeeze one more last question. Mohit I know you mentioned about the receivable, could you maybe give a little bit more color about how the payments might can progress with that particular client. I know you’ve mentioned there was an upfront investment made? Thank you.

Mohit Bhatia

Chief Financial Officer

Sure, so like I said as part of the commercial terms with a large client, they agreed to pay us a pretty substantial upfront payment, which will be used amongst other things to improve, and upgrade and refresh the infrastructure and technology used to serve the clients processes. That clearly changed the DSOs, because it came in as a receivable for the cash given only a few days later in the second quarter and that impacted our DSOs by over seven days. If I were to exclude this one client, which cause a swing in the DSOs, the rest of the companies DSOs [was in] only by about a day or about 1.4 days. I think, if we look at the business as usual of increasing DSOs of just 1 to 1.5 days, it is really a quarter one thing, it’s about timing, there are lots of new contracts that came in the fourth quarter of last year and if normal while we iron out the billing complexities, et cetera for these new logos. A lot of these are timing issues, we should get normalize in the second quarter, which is why we are confident as a company that our DSO should be back in control at the same levels of 2011 over the balance part of the year. Just for ample clarity, the one big receivable for this client that I alluded to has already been received in cash, so it will reflect in our quarter two, AR getting normalize, as well as our cash flow is being up. Jeff S. Rossetti – Janney Montgomery Scott LLC: Thanks. Nice quarter. NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Tien-tsin Huang with JPMorgan. Please proceed. Tien-tsin Huang – JPMorgan Securities LLC: Hi, thanks so much, good results. Just wanted to ask on the margin side, it sounds like it implies down to flat margins after a good start to the year. So how the year progress, is it really more just ramping up some costs as new clients come in, just wanted to get a little bit more color there? NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: Let me just take that and then I’m going to ask Mohit to jump in. We actually have not been able to drive as much investment as we thought we would in the first quarter Tien-tsin Huang – JPMorgan Securities LLC: Right. NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: As we’ve been saying a lot of the investments are in the front-end, these are domain expertise, people being brought in, it takes time to ramp these people up. And to some extent the margin that we delivered in the first quarter is a reflection of that. As we go through the year, we expect those investments to be done and that’s one of the reasons why we would expect our margins probably to look flat as we go through the year. Mohit?

Mohit Bhatia

Chief Financial Officer

No, absolutely, Tiger, I completely agree. Just peeling the onion a bit on that between gross margin and SG&A. Gross margin at 39% is very high. I think you should see it come down a bit over the next few quarters, maybe by 100 basis points approximately, but we’ll keep updating you. On the contrary, SG&A which is 24% of revenue should improve over the next three quarters again by 50 to 100 basis points, but those are some of the trending that we can all hope for as we walk down the rest of the year. Tien-tsin Huang – JPMorgan Securities LLC: Okay, that’s good to know. Just quickly on the capital markets, thanks for the color on that as well. I was curious, maybe your peers have talked about a lot more weaknesses, it sounds like you’re seeing something little bit different, a little bit better. I’m curious what’s perhaps driving the delta there, Tiger? NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: I can answer only for ourselves, I suppose. It’s probably a reflection of the type of services that we offer. Clearly, most of what we offer, not all of it, most of it is non-discretionary. Most of what we offer is annuity streams and is sticky. I mean, it’s classic business process management and even a substantial portion of Smart Decision Services. I think that have to be done. So I suspect, part of it is a discretionary component, which is why, in capital markets where clearly the businesses are finding a new way of dealing with the world. Some of those discretionary spends are coming under pressure. I suppose it’s that, all I can say is that, given the way the world is looking and most corporations saying, this is the way it’s going to be for quite some time to come. They are very actively in dialog, saying, we need to run our businesses differently. So it seems to be great conversations that we are having. Tien-tsin Huang – JPMorgan Securities LLC: Okay, good. Last one for me and I’ll jump off just on Japan, has that stabilized at this point, I know it’s a little bit weak last quarter? Thank you. NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: Yes, it’s stable. It is stable. Interestingly, lots of new conversations, but as you know probably Japan, decision cycle times are much, much longer than anywhere else in the world, but to specifically answer your question, stable. Tien-tsin Huang – JPMorgan Securities LLC: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Bhavan Suri with William Blair & Company. Please proceed. Bhavan Suri – William Blair & Co. LLC: Good morning, can you hear me?

Mohit Bhatia

Chief Financial Officer

Yes, Bhavan. Bhavan Suri – William Blair & Co. LLC: Great. Hey, Tiger. So, just a follow-up on that question, you mentioned sort of new infusions in core banking. Could you provide just a little color of what sort of things are they looking at or is this just an expansion of things like mortgage processing type work? NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: No, it’s in fact you hit one of the nails on the head. Mortgage clearly, I mean it’s pretty obvious that mortgage, given interest rate environment in the U.S. is seeing a surge in volumes. We have a very nice mortgage origination business and that got beefed up with the technology acquisitions that we did that allows clients to drive real efficiency on the front-end of the business and we all know how inefficient that front-end is. And we are seeing very great traction there. We are also beginning to see traction in classic retail banking operations after a pretty significant period of (inaudible) and I suspect that’s got to do with capacity that’s got rationalized, the reality of the new world and now saying, now we need to take a relook at costs having done all possible restructuring. And lastly, all the regulatory work that needs to get done, I mean the amount of new regulations and the work that needs to get done, just means a lot of more work that has to be done with no new revenue. Therefore the most effective, efficient way of doing it in a very scalable variable manner is a combination of factors that are driving that. Bhavan Suri – William Blair & Co. LLC: It is interesting Tiger because the other offshore players talk about regulatory work being pushed out, and I am not seeing that happen and sort of…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Edward Caso with Wells Fargo. Please proceed. Edward Caso – Wells Fargo Securities LLC: Hi, can you hear me, okay? NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: Yes, Ed hi. Edward Caso – Wells Fargo Securities LLC: Great, good evening. Can you talk a little bit about the demands from clients on you’re helping fund their decision? I mean with money being tight on their side, are they putting more pressure on you to arrange the contracts in a way that you sort of fund some of their upfront costs? NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: So, Ed, no, the answer to that specific question is no, nothing different than what it used to be. In fact, if we go back to 2009, 2010, probably the pressure was higher for obvious reasons. I think people have, I don’t think the people have a problem with cash flow these days. It’s more about productivity and it’s more about driving better outcomes. What we are finding is more opportunities to take over centers, to take over operations and two drivers of that. One, on the demand side, I think as a realization that actually someone like us and other people like us can drive real impact when we start penetrating a center and driving improvements and better outcomes, applying all our tools and methodologies and so on. On our side, there are clear areas where when we takeover a center, we get new capabilities, new domain in either an industry vertical or a domain in a geography that we could leverage off from any other clients. I mean, that’s the background to the Accounting Plaza deal. So is that upfront application of some cost? The answer is, yes. But I would say that’s more driven by the demand supply equation than…

Edward Caso - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Edward Caso with Wells Fargo

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Ashwin Shirvaikar with Citi. Please proceed. Ashwin your line is open, you may proceed. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citigroup Global Markets (United States): Hi, guys can you hear me now? NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: Yes Ashwin, yeah hi. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citigroup Global Markets (United States): Yeah, hi. So, a good quarter, I wouldn’t ask you about you guys crossed the employee milestone recently and as you get larger on the employee front and more global. Can you talk about how your recruiting practices change and particularly in places like the U.S. and as you grow in Asian business, can you talk about the implications to be a financials of growing in those regions? NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: Ashwin, yes, our employee base is now 56,000, so it’s much bigger than it used to be. Just obviously in the context of some of our bigger competitors, still very small. The interesting thing is it’s distributed across many countries and it’s distributed in some of the larger countries such as India or China, just to pick two examples across many centers. We do pride ourselves on picking centers of the future in advance, we tend to do that before others, we tend to tie up universities, even in the case of the U.S. where we just picked Richardson in Texas. Why did we pick that place? After intense study we realized that there are a couple of markets where the ability to get a broad spectrum of talent that we wanted and we wanted financial services, analytics, technology-type talent from a broad range of industries with a large population in the context of the U.S. that we could tap into and an environment that is very good to work with, and then we apply, interestingly, the practices that we apply on hiring, on working with universities, on reskilling employees before they even come in or prospective employees before they come in, injecting new content into universities are interesting that you can apply the same principles, the same practices in India, in China, in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, and now in the U.S. The content will be different because you are skilling people for different things, but it’s the same and that’s fascinating because our ability to then apply it with very fast time to market is one of the reasons why we think we can set up centers in anywhere from 60 to 90 days and get it going.

Ashwin Shirvaikar - Citigroup Global Markets

Analyst · Ashwin Shirvaikar with Citi

Well, I guess I was asking more about, for example, Richardson, Texas, I mean it’s Dallas basically and then you said that you bought Accounting Plaza, which is in Netherlands. So, these are high cost of labor locations, yes, the labors is plentiful. But I was asking more from a, is there an impact to the pace at which your cost grow relative to your revenues? In other words is there a margin impact down the road as you grow these locations? NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: So, great question, Ashwin. But if you look at the distribution of Accounting Plaza, yes they have a nice center in the Netherlands, but they have even bigger center in Poland and then the Czech Republic. Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citigroup Global Markets (United States): Okay. NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: So, from a global delivery footprint actually they are very nicely located. We like the Netherlands footprint, because we didn’t have it. All we need is a footprint because then we can serve one more language that is top to serve for almost anywhere else in the world. If you look at the distribution of our workforce, it is still predominantly distributed in the emerging market economies. When we deliver services from Denville or from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania which are obviously developed economies and now from Richardson, Texas. The type of work the people do there and the way those contracts are structured, which often is outcome based is such that with the right tools and the right methodologies and things like Smart Decisions service and Smart Enterprise Process, our objective is to drive the same margin profile Ashwin Shirvaikar – Citigroup Global Markets (United States): Okay. And on growth, my last question, I guess is as you signed many of these contacts and you’ve clearly have a…

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Kunal Tayal with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please proceed. Kunal Tayal – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Hi, thanks. Firstly, continuing on the capital market side of the business, Tiger, if you could give us some sense, if capital markets indeed didn’t measure up to your expectations for Q1 and then whether for the full year as a whole whether there are any changes in terms of expectations from this part of the business? NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: So, Kunal, when we made our operating plan for the year 2012, as well as when we gave our guidance last quarter for 2012, the unraveling of some of the things in capital markets had already happened, whether it was the bankruptcy situation in the U.S. or of the company that went bankrupt and so on. So, the plan that we built was built on that basis. So did business then delivered the expectations that were post that, the answer is yes. Had all of that not happened, our expectations would have been different, but post that our expectations were met. Kunal Tayal – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Got it, that is helpful. Secondly, if you could talk about the outlook for your top five clients. This quarter they’ve done particularly well, so if you expect your top five clients to continue growing ahead of the company for rest of the year? NV "Tiger" Tyagarajan: I think we’ll have get into account by account analysis and discussion. It’s also a function of how would the size of the company versus the size of our penetration and therefore the growth you can expect. Broadly I can tell you that when we work with our client, the range of services that we have allows us to penetrate that client in many directions over many years. As we’ve built more services and as we have expanded more end-to-end our opportunity to drive better outcomes for our clients, to drive more value to our clients allows us to continue to drive new growth with a lot of those relationships. So I would characterize a lot of the accounts, not just the top five as relationships that one could grow over many years. And they grow in stages as they go through transitions. Kunal Tayal – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Right, and lastly, just in terms of the expectation from GE, that would still be flat on a YoY basis, full year basis? NV "Tiger" Tyagarajan: That’s right, Kunal. That’s the way we would continue to think about it. We’re highly penetrated. We have very deep penetration with almost every business that we have. We would track to GEs on growth to some extent and GE Capital on growth and therefore at the moment we would work with our close to flat for the year. Kunal Tayal – Bank of America Merrill Lynch: Sure, thank you. NV "Tiger" Tyagarajan: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Manish Hemrajani with Oppenheimer. Please proceed. Manish Hemrajani – Oppenheimer Securities: Hi, good quarter, guys. Thanks for taking my call. NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: Hi, Manish. Manish Hemrajani – Oppenheimer Securities: GE revenues were up about 3% this quarter, higher than what most folks had expected. If you look at GE’s results as well, they reported strong results in 1Q, industrial growth of 11% and 14% order growth. Are you seeing some of that growth that GE is reflecting the work that you do for them? And then how do you see GE contribution playing out for the rest of the year? NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: So, I’ll have Mohit talk to contribution by the time we get to the end of the year. But in terms of GE growth, if you look at GE’s businesses, you would broadly think about it as of GE Industrial business and GE Capital. We are clearly seeing growth towards the GE Industrial businesses where we are seeing growth in Smart Decision Services with GE Industrial businesses, we are seeing growth with IT. Remember that the growth that GE gets sometimes is orders and then equipment delivery and real work starts when that equipment needs to be furbished. So there is a longer tail that GE has and similarly our work also has a longer tail where our work picks up when the service revenue I suspect picks up. On the GE Capital side, it’s all a function of GE Capital’s trajectory to whatever they have told in terms of managing their balance sheet and so on. So overall, we’re seeing growth in different parts of the businesses, the way those businesses grow and acquired, when businesses acquire new companies within that portfolio that allows us to get in and do more work as they integrate those businesses.

Mohit Bhatia

Chief Financial Officer

And just for some color, the 3% growth that you saw with GE, largely came from both IT and from the Smart Decision services. So, just like other global customers, there continues to be a demand even from many of the GE businesses for services like analytics and reengineering that we have to offer as part of SDS, and the IT business is growing nice. So, the IT business for GE grew almost 6% contributing to that overall 3% growth of GE as an account with us. Manish Hemrajani – Oppenheimer Securities: Got it, and then probably you commented on this before, attritional levels of 0.2% are the lowest we’ve seen in the last three years. Anymore color on that, is that sustainable and how should we view that going forward? NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: Sustainable, well, our objective is to try and sustain it, to clearly try and sustain it, Manish. But the reality is we all know that the world, when I say world, not just the developed economy, the emerging economies have slowed down a little bit on growth. And a lot of the people who tried from our businesses don’t necessarily go to our competitors, they actually end up in industry and a lot of the industries have had a little bit of a hiccup which is beginning to start getting reflected in India or China’s GPD growth base. I think that would have an impact. Over time it did have an impact in 2009 when attrition did come down, we seen that now. But as far as we are concerned, as we always think about these as long-term employee propositions and our long-term employee proposition remains unchanged, which is to build careers, allow people to come in and build careers. We like people who stay for a long time, because that allows them to build expertise. It adds value to our clients and obviously, then it adds value to the company. So, we don’t think about these in the context of what’s happening in the environment today versus tomorrow. We tend to drive employee practices in a very consistent way over a much longer timeframe. Manish Hemrajani – Oppenheimer Securities: Got it, that’s all I had. Thank you NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Brian Keane with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed. Bryan C. Keane – Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.: Hi, guys. I just want to ask about the acceleration of organic growth. I think it was a 11.5% last quarter, 13.4% this quarter. Obviously, lots of competitors were seeing a deceleration in our year-over-year organic growth rate. So I’m just hoping you could pinpoint the reason you guys think that you saw that acceleration in the first quarter? NV “Tiger” Tyagarajan: So, Bryan first of all, I would say and we’ve said this many, many times over many years. We are a little careful about looking at just a quarter. We are a long cycle business, I mean for various reasons that I have already described. The only way we really think about the business in terms of all its metrics is at least a year. So, with that as the background, we had a good quarter with GE. We had a good quarter with IT, where we’ve done something that actually is having an impact. I don’t think it’s the market. At the end of the day, in IT we are small in the context of the total market and then the context of our competitors. So some of the things that we did over the last 18 to 24 months in IT and it’s been a series of actions and then the final action being where some of the leaders who came in from the Headstrong business with much deeper technology expertise. And then Smart Decision Services, where I think the services that we offer match the needs of the market almost to the tee, albeit data and analytics, and reengineering and these services have been built over 15 years. We didn’t this…

Mohit Bhatia

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We have no further questions. I will now turn the call back over to Shishir Verma for any closing remarks.

Shishir Verma

Head of Investor Relations

Thank you everyone for joining us on our call today. If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. Thank you.