Genpact Limited
Q1 2017 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 5 May 2017

[Operator:]

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the First Quarter 2017 Genpact Limited Earnings Conference Call. My name is Michelle and I will be your conference moderator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session towards the end of this conference. We will expect the call to conclude in an hour. As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to Roger Sachs, Head of Investor Relations at Genpact. Please proceed, sir.

[Roger Sachs:]

Thank you, Michelle. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Genpact's first quarter earnings call to discuss our results for quarter ended March 31, 2017. We hope you have had a chance to review our earnings release which was posted to the IR section of our website, genpact.com. With me in New York today are Tiger Tyagarajan, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Ed Fitzpatrick, our Chief Financial Officer. Our agenda today will be as follows

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Thank you, Roger. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our 2017 first quarter earnings call. We delivered solid first quarter results, highlighted by continued momentum for our transformational services revenues in consulting, digital and analytics that drove our Global Client BPO growth. In the current volatile and uncertain macro environment, we are off to a very good start to the year. Specifically during the quarter, total revenues increased 3% on a constant currency basis. Global Client revenue increased 6% on a constant currency basis. Global Client BPO revenue was up 9% on a constant currency basis. Adjusted operating income margin was 14.1% and adjusted EPS was $0.31. Global Client revenue grew 6% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. This was driven by 9% constant currency growth in our core Global Client BPO business that more than offset a 4% Global Client ITO year-over-year decline as we cycle through the impact of the reduction in discretionary spending on legacy IT projects during the second half of 2016 in the capital markets and healthcare industries. Our unique and differentiated Lean Digital approach continues to gain increasing traction in the market as our digital transformation engagements grew approximately 20% during the quarter and currently represent about 20% of the total company revenue. Global Client growth was broad-based across most of our targeted verticals, including CPG, manufacturing, high tech, life sand banking. Along with the strong growth I just mentioned for our transformational services, our financial accounting and core industry vertical operation service lines also grew nicely during the first quarter. GE revenue declined 17% in the first quarter in line with our expectations as we continue to feel the impact from the phase out of the work we do for GE Capital corporate related to GE's divestiture of a significant portion of the GE Capital businesses. We saw growth in our pipeline during the first quarter as a number of new deals with potential new and existing clients were teed up. A majority of these have a significant digital and analytics transformational flavor to them and are broad-based across most of our targeted verticals, service lines and geographies. Clients continue to view today's world as being very volatile with digital disruption being top of mind in boardrooms and C-suites. Everyone is looking to leverage digital and real-time predictive analytics to find new ways to drive growth and run their businesses. We are seeing four key trends cut across our clients and the way they are thinking. First, companies increasingly want to adopt digital at scale, going on the offensive from experimentation to industrialization of digital within their businesses. Management teams want to use digital to drive a step change in customer experience by dramatically scaling up automation of operations and deploying predictive analytics-driven decision-making in many parts of their businesses. Second, there is significant interest in experimenting with specific artificial intelligence-driven solutions, allowing companies to redefine what work is and how it gets done and extract new sources of growth and productivity. Third, management teams are increasingly realizing the value of implementing full end-to-end transformation from the front office where significant investments have already been made, all the way through the middle and back office. This one office solution results in significantly enhanced end user experiences that has become mission-critical in today's environment. And finally, companies are beginning to see the problems of simply employing digital tools out of context. They are now realizing that the deep domain expertise, combined with knowledge of specific client processes, are critical factors to understand how work can be re-imagined with the right set of digital tools and technologies. Our pivot to Lean Digital, which encompasses the intersection of domain knowledge and digital technologies, puts Genpact in the enviable position to be able to capture the value of these four secular trends and take advantage of the large opportunities in a fast-growing market. Our clearly differentiated offering reimagines and then transforms existing client processes by embedding the power of digital technologies and analytics. We are having great success with these engagements and we will continue to invest to further partner with clients along their transformation journeys and subsequently run these re-imagined operations for them. As we discussed at our recent Investor Day, we have two core engines of growth that are extremely complementary to each other. The first is the one I just described, Intelligent Operations, representing our BPM offerings in which we integrate and embed new digital technologies, thereby automating and completely changing the way clients' businesses are run. The second engine of our growth is digital-led solutions such as designing, implementing and managing robotic process automation or dynamic workflow implementations or mobility solutions across clients' end-to-end operations. It also includes using artificial intelligence to extract insights and value. These digital-led solutions are highly differentiated as they embed our deep domain and process expertise that we have acquired over the last 15 years running numerous operations for more than 700 clients. These two growth engines feed into each other. The more we are engaged in digital-led transformations for our clients, the more we are finding opportunities to manage clients' operations and analytics on an ongoing basis. We also have a competitive advantage because of our access to one of the world's largest sandboxes of data, and a deep experience set from years of cultivating our relationships with clients in both business and functional leadership positions. Our investments over the last few years in domain, digital and analytics capabilities have cemented our reputation as a transformation thought leader. As I mentioned earlier, growing at approximately 20%, transformation services represent the driving force behind our industry-leading Global Client BPO growth rate. These engagements typically act as the tip of the spear for greater client penetration and are strongly resonating in the marketplace as 75% of our first quarter bookings have transformation components embedded in them. Let me share a few exciting examples of how these transformation engagements are driving significant impact for our clients. First, for a global insurance company using digital technologies, we managed a large-scale complex data migration of critical policy information from the ERP system of one of its recently acquired subsidiaries into the clients' existing ERP. Implementing robotic process automation technology to significantly reduce manual-intensive work, the data was integrated with 100% accuracy at a dramatically faster pace, accelerating the time to market for new products. This deal included a material gain share of component based upon outcome improvement. The core to this engagement was our deep understanding of all the data as it relates to insurance as a domain. Next, for a leading global asset management company, we are transforming the way they target financial advisers and registered investment agents to help increase assets under management for their various funds. Our cloud-based solutions pulls data from multiple sources, including the clients' internal systems like CRMs and external sources such as social media, to develop predictive analytics for the clients' sales force to prioritize marketing efforts to various intermediaries. And lastly, we are working with one of the largest global technology companies to transform their finance operations. Under this engagement, we will create a robotic center of excellence, as well as digitized manual processes using RPA to improve accuracy, reduce turnaround time and also ensure regulatory compliance across many of their finance functions. While this was a highly competitive deal, our demonstrated deep digital domain expertise, high referencability and innovative outcome and gain share-based commercial model led us to win this engagement. Let me now spend a few minutes on M&A. It is a clear priority for us, and we are now focused on two broad themes. First is adding specific targeted digital and analytics capabilities; and second, to continue to add domain expertise in our targeted verticals and service lines where we see attractive growth opportunities. We recently announced two strategic acquisitions. The first deal, RAGE Frameworks, adds tremendous capabilities in the rapidly emerging area of artificial intelligence. RAGE's leading AI platform significantly simplifies automation challenges for a range of mission-critical functions, including extracting data and insights from balance sheets, contracts, news, and business reports. These automation capabilities are transforming work in areas such as commercial lending, insurance policy underwriting, financial statement analysis, contract reviews, supply chain optimization, and supply risk management. Advanced technologies such as AI that combine the best elements of human expertise along with machine intelligence are becoming increasingly critical for clients to gain and sustain a competitive advantage. This acquisition builds upon our prior successful partnership with RAGE, where we worked together on a number of transformational client engagements. The second deal is the acquisition of BrightClaim, which we announced yesterday. It is a leading U.S. domestic provider of end-to-end claims solutions to the property and casualty insurance market. This transaction adds new insurance capabilities to round out our insurance value chain and expands our U.S. onshore presence with new locations in Georgia and Texas. The enhanced domain depth, coupled with our digital analytics capabilities, will create a highly differentiated offering to drive value for carriers by increasing their customer satisfaction and retention. We can not only reduce cycle times for claim processing, but also provide transparency throughout the process life cycle. Digital penetration within the insurance industry is in early stage, and there is a fantastic opportunity for us to help clients disrupt this industry. Importantly, both of these deals add great leaders and talent into our organization. As discussed during our recent Investor Day, we are in the midst of evaluating our IT portfolio to determine where to double down and increase our focus as we drive long-term growth and create shareholder value. Directionally, we are moving more towards streamlining our ITO business into areas that connect with our domain expertise, such as platforms related to risk and commercial lending and leasing. Additionally, we plan to invest in a few select areas where there is strong market demand and we can leverage existing capabilities, including data engineering, to extend our strength in the analytics value chain. Our objective is to refocus our ITO portfolio to areas where we can offer differentiated solutions that are complementary to our BPO, digital, and analytics strategies. With that, let me turn the call over to Ed.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Thank you, Tiger, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'll provide you with more detail on our first quarter results, followed by key balance sheet and cash flow highlights. We generated total revenues of $623 million in the first quarter, an increase of 2% year-over-year or 3% on a constant currency basis. Revenues from Global Clients, which represent 89% of our total revenue, increased 5% year-over-year or 6% on a constant currency basis. Within Global Clients, our BPO revenues grew 7% year-over-year, or 9% on a constant currency basis, while Global Client IT services revenues declined 5%. As Tiger mentioned, Global Client growth was led by our transformational services, which represent the fastest-growing area of our business. GE revenues, which represent 11% of total revenue, declined 17%, largely in line with our expectations. Overall, business process outsourcing revenues, which represent 82% of our total revenues, increased 5% year-over-year, while total IT services revenue declined 7%. We continue to expand relationships within Global Clients across a range of our targeted industrial verticals. In the 12-month period ending March 31, 2017, we grew the number of client relationships with annual revenues over $5 million to 110, from 106. We also grew the number of global clients with more than $50 million in annual revenue from 4 to 6 over the same period. Adjusted income from operations for the quarter was 88 million, up 3% year-over-year with a corresponding margin of 14.1%, compared to 14% during the first quarter of 2016. Our gross margins remained relatively stable during the quarter at 38.5%, compared to 38.8% during the first quarter of last year. SG&A expenses totaled $161 million, in line with the first quarter of last year. Our sales and marketing expense as a percentage of revenue was approximately 6.4%, compared to 7.3% in the same quarter last year due to operating leverage and timing of marketing expenses. Total G&A expense as a percentage of revenue this quarter increased by approximately 40 basis points year-over-year, largely due to ongoing investments in digital and domain capabilities, but partially offset by cost management and leverage in G&A spending. Our adjusted EPS for the first quarter was $0.31 per share, including a $0.02 per share loss from foreign currency balance sheet re-measurement. EPS was flat year-over-year, as the benefit of higher operating income and share repurchase activity of $0.01 and $0.02, respectively, was offset by $0.01 each from higher interest expense and higher balance sheet-related FX losses. As a reminder, our prior EPS outlook for the year did not include balance sheet-related FX gains or losses. During the quarter, we executed on our capital allocation plans that we outlined during our prior earnings call. First, we successfully tapped the investment grade corporate bond market and secured an attractively priced $350 million bond, providing us greater flexibility to engage in strategic M&A opportunities, support our organic growth initiatives, and return capital to shareholders. On the M&A front, as Tiger has already discussed, subsequent to the end of the first quarter, we closed on two acquisitions

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Thank you, Ed. We all know that digital disruption is the top of mind for Boards and CXOs. We are in a world where agility, flexibility and nimbleness in building new innovative solutions, leveraging new digital technologies and using AI-driven breakthroughs wins the day. Our deep foundation in vertical and horizontal domain, our reputation for outstanding client Net Promoter Scores, our natural affinity and relationships built over many years with business and functional leaders in our client organizations positions us really well to be their trusted adviser in these times. We have, over the last few years, invested and acquired domain capabilities, digital talent and specific technologies, and scaled up our front-end client-facing teams. This has allowed us to grow our Transformation Services revenues just in the last two years with Lean Digital becoming a very well established industry-recognized approach. At the same time, our growing onshore operating delivery footprint in more than 10 cities in the U.S. with more than 4,000 people and similar relative footprints in the U.K., Continental Europe, Japan and Australia allows us to provide a great flexibility and value for our clients' varied needs. We continue to add to our global talent and leadership depth, and we are using our balance sheet thoughtfully to do very targeted strategic acquisitions. All of these give us tremendous confidence about our business in these times. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Roger.

[Roger Sachs:]

Thank you, Tiger. We would now like to open our call for your questions. Michelle, can you please provide the instructions?

[Operator:]

Our first question comes from the line of Ashwin Shirvaikar with Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Ashwin Shirvaikar:]

Thank you. Hi, Tiger. Hi, Ed.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Hi, Ashwin.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Hi, Ashwin.

[Ashwin Shirvaikar:]

So my first question is with regards to the complexity of deals. Is that rising because of the digital transformation-type contracts that you're signing? And then the resulting productivity gains, obviously, are higher when you apply AI and such. What does that do to your expected long-term growth?

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Great question, Ashwin. The answer is yes to all of the above. Deals have been becoming complex, actually not now but over the last – quite a few years. And that included the transformational capabilities, which now has a lot more digital components to it. A lot of our deals have multi-location delivery. A lot of them have always had, particularly in the last four or five years, onshore delivery components. Those continue to undergo changes. And all of that lends the complexity that you just described. So the answer is yes. And some of that also ends up elongating, particularly the last leg of decision-making, which includes contracting. And then with digital technologies available, including AI, productivity expectations, productivity that can be driven, and value that can be driven also changes. Contracting commercial terms often now includes gain share in them. I gave a couple of examples where that's exactly the way those contracts are constructed. Obviously, the growth that we are seeing has incorporated into it what we call net growth because there is what one can call gross growth and then productivity and all of that gets driven and then you get net growth. So what you see ultimately and the plan that we have incorporates all of that productivity. Remember, we've always driven productivity, we just have more tools to drive it and probably drive it faster, better and earlier.

[Ashwin Shirvaikar:]

Understood. Understood. The second question I have is with regards to – you have these two deals that you signed, acquisitions that you made post the quarter. Does that signal an acceleration in deal making? And if so, eventually what sort of leverage ratio are you comfortable with?

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

So I'll answer the first part of the question, I'll have Ed respond to the second. I just think it's a little bit of timing that brought both those deals together almost next to each other. The reality is that over the last 12-plus months, we've been talking about an increased and really focused effort around specific M&A. And the two teams that I laid out had been the two teams that we've been working on, which is analytics and digital capabilities. Think about the PNMsoft acquisition and dynamic workflow that we did, the Endeavour mobility solutions acquisition that we did. And the second team has been around specific domain capabilities in the areas of our deep interest given growth trajectories and so on. Insurance has been one of those areas that we have been focused on for quite some time, and we've actually circled through many, many opportunities before zeroing in and doing the BrightClaim acquisition. So one part of the answer is, yes, we are very focused on their positions for those two teams. Just the fact that two happened so close to each other is a little bit of coincidence in timing.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

And I would add, Ashwin, we intimated that we will be likely doing more M&A, right? Our funnel was better, it was more focused than what we were looking for and we talked about it at the Investor Day. So you shouldn't be surprised to see that we're doing more. We're pleased with the level that we've done. On the levels, the ratios, EBITDA, we said, hey, we think we could stay between one and two and below two and maintain that investment grade rating. If we go over two at a certain point in time, our long-term goal to kind of stay back within that range of one to two. But we feel comfortable with where we are, and we have plenty of liquidity to get after the assets that we think we need to get after to continue to drive that growth that we've just talked about.

[Ashwin Shirvaikar:]

Okay, great. Thank you, guys.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Thanks, Ashwin.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Joseph Foresi with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Joseph Foresi:]

Hi. I was wondering if we could get an update on the outlook for ITO and GE in light of this quarter's results. I know you've given us some color in the past, I'm just wondering if anything has sort of changed on the outlook for this year and next year?

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Yeah, no change there, Joe. Same as the prior.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Yeah, no change, Joe. Joe, hi. No change either for GE or for ITO. GE, we expected exactly the first quarter to be the way it has turned out, and we expect the full year to be in the range that we had given for GE and for ITO.

[Joseph Foresi:]

Okay. And then my second question just on the quarter, it seems like you're beat by a couple of million here, at least versus Street expectations. But then it looks like the guidance was raised in kind of accordance with what the revenues are coming in from acquisitions. So I was just hoping you could reconcile those two. Are you being conservative with the outlook at this stage? Was there some other piece of the business that's maybe not performing as expected? Maybe you could just give a little color around that.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Yeah, Joe. I mean, as you know, the quarters can vary a bit. So we're pleased that we got off to the start that we get off to but the full year – really no change in our full year outlook as the quarters can ebb and flow a bit as we go here. So I...

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Yeah. And Joe, I've already said this. I think for many, many years, our business is not a quarter-by-quarter business. So we had a very good quarter one, we're very pleased with the first quarter, but I don't think that necessarily changes the range we've given. And we've given a broad range. And clearly, the acquisitions add to that, and that's what we've done. Right now, I think the range that we've given is a good range.

[Joseph Foresi:]

Okay. And then the last one for me, on the digital side, how much are you using that internally for the process that you're doing for the customer, versus selling it as a product to a customer, cross-selling it? I'm just trying to get a sense of, when you talk about that digital growth rate, is that the amount that's in the current business that you're selling, or is that a new offering that you're selling out to new customers? Thanks.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

So Joe, it's a combination of both. I would say that it depends on the type of process. Most of the time, digital implementations require end-to-end process implementation. You cannot do it to a small piece of process, so therefore it requires deep engagement with the client around their end-to-end process. Some parts of the process, obviously, the client runs, the other parts of the process we run. And unless that engagement comes through and the project gets vetted and implemented and sponsored by the customer, we really can't digitize and apply some of these digital technologies to our operations for the client. So that actually constrains the speed and cadence with which you can do that into our operations. So to that extent, a significant and material proportion of transformation services and digital implementations are implementations in a lot of new deals, implementations in a lot of client-driven processes, and that's why we get separately paid for it, and it gets recognized as separate revenue.

[Joseph Foresi:]

Got it. Thank you.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Thanks, Joe.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And our next question comes from Anil Doradla from William Blair. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Anil Kumar Doradla:]

Hey, guys. Good job on the Global Client BPO business.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Thank you, Anil.

[Anil Kumar Doradla:]

So a couple of questions, Tiger. You talk about transformations being one of the fastest sub-segments there, what proportion of that Global Client BPO business would you attribute to transformational projects today?

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

So the 20% is for Global Clients, right? Yeah. So 20% of our – broadly about 20% of our Global Clients revenue is transformational services, and it is growing at obviously close to 20% rate so therefore, it's growing at higher than Global Clients total rates.

[Anil Kumar Doradla:]

Okay. So that was 20%. It was not the growth, it was 20% of the Global Client BPO.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Right. Yeah.

[Anil Kumar Doradla:]

Okay...

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Yeah. That's right.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Global Client population.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

That's right.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Yeah.

[Anil Kumar Doradla:]

Right. Now – so Tiger, your commentary around your IT portfolio, you used the word streamlining your IT portfolio. So do I take it that the divestiture is not on the cards, and you're ruling that out for now?

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Let me answer the question. I don't think we ever ruled it in to rule it out. So, the first step in the journey is to make sure that we identify those areas that we double, triple down on, that we know connect back very well to our domain, our BPO, our analytics, and our digital. And we're actually pretty clear about what those are. We are at a stage where actually, we are beginning to align our force within that direction. If you actually parse some of the IT growth, interestingly, capital markets and healthcare is actually the IT portion that has declined more than the non-capital markets and healthcare. I mean, you know the GE numbers in any case. And a lot of the growth we are getting is on the commercial lending, commercial leasing, risk, analytics connected to data engineering, all the stuff that we talked about as doubling, tripling down. So I think that's more important, the way we see it, than the question on divestiture. And I think it's actually a reflection of what we did. If you remember four years back, when we said we're going to double, triple down on some verticals. If you remember, we talked about a vertical like telecom, where we said we are not going to add anymore and we're not going to invest and we're not going to add salespeople, et cetera, et cetera. We think we can undertake a similar journey in IT, and that's exactly what we're doing.

[Anil Kumar Doradla:]

Okay. And finally, Tiger, if you don't mind me sneaking one more. The pricing environment at GE, a lot of moving parts at GE, both on the IT side as well as the BPO side. So how is GE behaving in terms of the pricing with you guys? Is it getting more aggressive or it's pretty much the same?

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

I'll start (34

[Anil Kumar Doradla:]

Very good. Thank you.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Thanks, Anil.

[Operator:]

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

[Edward S. Caso:]

Hi. Good evening. I was curious what you're hearing from your clients around the whole sort of isolationist Trump agenda, and are they asking you to do things differently? I noted that you had called out that you have 10 U.S. centers, 4,000 people. I don't think I've heard you say that before so is that in line with sort of pressure you're getting from clients? Thanks.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

So Ed, I just want to tell you that you sound really distant. But I heard the question. Yeah, I heard the question. So I would say clients come in with all kinds of requirements. For quite some time now, we have seen – and this has got nothing to do with the current environment. For quite some time now we've seen our processes and our relationship with clients include a lot more onshore component than it used to have. It's a driver of why we are with an operating delivery footprint of more than 10 centers and more than 4,000 people, that's happened over the last five years. Is there some more reasons to have some clients have their conversation? The answer is yes. Do we have all the firepower to be able to bring different permutations and combinations of global delivery, onshore delivery, onshore delivery from different parts of the U.S., and digital transformation prior to onshore delivery, digital transformation prior to global delivery or vice versa? The answer is we can do all of the above and different permutations and combinations depending on the client. And there are probably more such conversations (37

[Edward S. Caso:]

Does that have – sorry about the mic before. Does that have implications, therefore, for your margins? My understanding is your India- ,Philippine-centric margins are dramatically higher than what you can do in the U.S. so we're going to have a little bit more U.S. footprint, or is that sort of an anchor on your ability to sort of raise margins over time?

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

So Ed, here's the way I would think about it. First of all, again, we've been navigating this actually for the last five years. And as our onshore delivery proportion to the total business that's grown, we managed our margins. And our expectation would be to continue to do that within the construct of the way we manage our overall margins. The reality is that often onshore work is higher value-added work. Often onshore work has a higher degree of sensitivity, regulatory components, components that have – you need to be closer to the customer. And by the way, the use and impact of AI and digital has a significant impact on those types of services provided onshore with digital and transformation attached to it. So I would not expect it to have any different margin impact than it had over the last five years.

[Edward S. Caso:]

Thank you.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Thanks, Ed.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Tien-Tsin Huang:]

Hello. Good afternoon. I was going to ask one just quick. First on sales and marketing, I guess that came in a little bit lower than what we had. I think you mentioned something about timing, but anything else to read into there? Any possibility maybe that bookings came in a little bit slower, for example? Just curious.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

No. Tien-Tsin, hi. No, not at all. In fact, our sales team grew quarter-by-quarter comparison, first quarter-to-first quarter comparison exactly as on plan. This is classic marketing. You decide when you want to run your marketing campaigns, and as we entered the year we actually have a significant marketing campaign ramp as we go into the second half of the year. It's really marketing expense related. It had some components of a very nice set of efficiency that we drove around travel. And in our business, professional services business, travel is a significant component of all expenses around people and that also had a good impact. And that impact you would continue to see through the year, but we're going to use that for investing, continue to invest in the front end. But the marketing one is more – it's very deterministic specific timing first quarter to the other parts of the year.

[Tien-Tsin Huang:]

Okay. I just wanted to make sure. And then just my follow-up on the M&A side. It certainly sounds like you're going to be doing more in capability-driven acquisitions, thinking something like a BrightClaim, for example. Is it – how much of – how are you going to integrate those assets? Are you going to do things differently? I'm trying to think about maybe they have a very attractive client list on P&C and it's going to be more you cross-selling into that versus integrating the asset and moving it in the other direction. Just trying to understand how important the integration side is versus cross-selling, if that makes sense, Tiger?

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

No, it does. It does. So let's take BrightClaim as an example. It's very focused on the insurance P&C space so that makes it, in some respects, very easy for us to think about integration, so it becomes part of our insurance vertical. So the insurance team, which already had some onshore operations now has a significant materially larger onshore operations with a center in Georgia and a center in Texas, and has a end-to-end proposition to go to clients with on claims. So we will take those capabilities to our clients. We will take our capabilities, particularly digital and analytics, into their existing operations into their clients, and we will take the combined capability to new clients. And therefore you can see that all three are very important, all three are component that we are very excited about, and all three will be owned completely by the insurance vertical. So we see this as a very classic integration around both the front end and cross-sell in both directions as well as bringing end-to-end capabilities and integrating digital and analytics into the solutions.

[Tien-Tsin Huang:]

Got you. Okay. Thanks for the insight.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Thanks, Tien-Tsin.

[Operator:]

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

[Frank C. Atkins:]

Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask a little bit about sales force productivity. Are you still seeing increases in the productivity of your sales people? And then any visibility on the pipeline going forward that give you confidence in the kind of new revenue range? How confident are you in terms of visibility?

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

So Frank, on the first one, we don't expect sale – and we don't monitor and measure productivity and expect productivity on a quarter-by-quarter basis. Again, the nature of our business, it doesn't make sense to do that. Plus first quarter is very different from other quarters. If you look at on an annual basis, I think the steep ramp in productivity happened in the early years post our addition to the sales team. As that sales team has become more steady state and mature, and as our addition to the sales team has now become more steady state, one would expect that productivity to cap off. And we are seeing that and that's our plan and that's our expectation.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Well, the confidence in the outlook, I would just say we're another quarter in so the unsold amount shrinks a bit so the confidence will build with each quarter as we go here. But I think the range we've given is appropriate.

[Frank C. Atkins:]

Okay, great. And wanted to ask, are you seeing more traction with native digital customers? And any changes in client base in terms of the types of companies interested?

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Native digital...

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

More technology based companies, is that what you're referring to?

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Is that your question, Frank? Are you talking about companies who are actually digital technology companies themselves?

[Frank C. Atkins:]

That's correct. Yeah, clients.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Yeah. So good question, Frank. Clearly, one of the verticals – one of our chosen verticals is high tech. It is actually one of our fastest-growing verticals, no surprise. It is a small vertical for us in comparison to some of our more mature verticals, but we are seeing fast growth there. We're also seeing growth in jobs and types of jobs and skills that are a little different. As an example, think about machine learning and AI, which a number of these new technology companies are using in their business. I think what you'll find is going to happen over the years is a lot of talent and human talent has to get aligned to those businesses in order to teach the machines to do what they're supposed to do and learn what they're supposed to do better. And that comes from understanding the domain that those technologies are focused on, understanding the data sets they are using. And we are seeing growth there. We're seeing growth where we are aligning teams to those technology companies in those domains to help the machine learning and AI tools that they have to become better at what they are learning and actually learn more. And so when – in some respects, you have human beings partner with machines to teach the machines.

[Frank C. Atkins:]

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Thanks, Frank.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Thanks, Frank.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of David Koning with Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[David J. Koning:]

Yeah. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Hi, David.

[David J. Koning:]

Yeah, hi. And I guess first of all, just as we think sequentially this quarter, I'm not sure if you get too much impact from the acquisition yet in this quarter, just I'm not sure if they're going to close towards the end of the quarter. But how should we think, normally you get some nice sequential ramp in Q2, should it be pretty normalized this quarter or is there anything moving either way relative to normal as we think of Q2?

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

When we talked about sequential growth on the last call, we talked about first quarter being the worst and maybe a little bit better second quarter, which is still the case. We should be a little bit better now, a little bit better in Q3 and probably just slightly better in Q4. So most of the growth was more second half versus the first half. I think that's still going to be the case and probably more so now with the M&A coming through. So you'll only have partial month for Q2, so it'll be muted but more of that should flow through in Q3 and Q4.

[David J. Koning:]

Okay. And when we think of acquisitions, you're getting a 1% benefit from the two acquisitions you announced for the year. If you only get half of your contribution, it really means that annualized you're getting about 2% from those. And then I think the Pfizer – just looking at the Pfizer 10-Q, I don't think that closed yet either with you guys so that should add a little more. I mean, it's just that the back half get pretty nice contribution, is it 3% from acquisition?

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Yeah. So you see the numbers for the acquisitions so I'll let you to (47

[David J. Koning:]

Okay. And when we put it all together, though, it just seems like between acquisition, between – probably hitting some of the toughest comps in the first half, I mean, you'll be exiting this year at a pretty nice rate as we look into next year, it seems like.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

I think we're happy with the inorganic additions. And obviously, we said we're going to get after this in a more meaningful way and we have, so pleased with that. And probably more so, you heard Tiger talk about what it's bringing to the table for us. So just really pleased with the domain expertise and what RAGE is bringing from an artificial intelligence perspective.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Yeah. But you're right, we have a good trajectory going forward.

[David J. Koning:]

All right. Great. Well, thank you.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Thanks, Dave.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Thanks.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Keith Bachman of BMO. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Keith Frances Bachman:]

Hi. Sorry about the background noise, guys, but I wanted to ask two questions. One, a short-term focus, the follow-on they get. (48

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Yeah. I don't think we disagree with any of your hypotheses. I think you're right. I think, with the RAGE piece of it, it's kind of early days, right, and we're just ramping that up, right? So the revenue contribution not yet at a level where it's going to start moving operating margins, although I did say that it would get to company margins near term. So I think we're there. On the digital side, we do think that, the more compelling the solution, the better the solution; the more complex the solution that we provide, the better the margins will be. With that said, we're not going to guide you towards any kind of, okay, here's our new operating margin as a result. We'll see how that plays out over time. The good news is, it is moving in a direction that we like. We think it's more complex and more compelling solutions for our clients. So, we'll update you on operating margins as we get closer on a year-by-year basis. And as we already told you, we do expect to improve margins over time. So Tiger, anything to add?

[Keith Frances Bachman:]

Okay. Okay.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

No. I think the combination of all the above, that gets us to being able to manage that portfolio. It includes everything that you said, as I've pointed out.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

And you're right. The IT mix – the IT, we've talked about that being a bit – particularly the legacy IT being a bit lower in terms of operating margin. And if that is growing at a slower clip, naturally you should see that naturally improve in operating margin over time. You're right.

[Keith Frances Bachman:]

Okay. Tiger, I wanted to ask a question of you. My follow-up is a bit different, and it's a more strategic or reflective longer-term comment. You guys are adding, call it, 1 to 2 points of growth through M&A. Accenture has been adding 2 points, I think recently probably closer to 3 points. Cognizant has the same objective. So there's a lot of demand out there for all the digital assets. As you think about the next couple years, is there enough pipeline to keep fueling what sounds like more demand than supply, at least, from – I don't want to call it start-up community, but the younger services companies. Is there enough supply out there to feed all the demand? Or, how do you think this shakes out, even amongst the larger companies, do you think we might see consolidation as growth rates have been lower, to call it, half of what they were a year or two ago? How does this shake out, you think, on the M&A cycle? Thanks.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

So let me answer the second part first, which is, one would typically expect, in the classic expectation, as growth rate slows down in an industry, people do start thinking about bigger consolidations. The one thing that one should remember is, there is a transformation that is happening in our industry, as well as in our client industry, meaning that some of the legacy IT work – there may not be an appetite to combine two businesses who are both trying to deal with declining old work and trying to accelerate growth on new work. So I'm not so sure if that conceptual theory, that consolidation, is going to happen, necessarily plays out. It could play out. On the digital one, I think there is enough brainpower and ideas out there across the globe. There is enough venture capital and other capital that is available for people to experiment, for people to build. We all know the ratio of success versus failure in these startups. And acquisitions of the kind that you described us, or someone else like us doing, typically don't tend to be acquisitions where the cases have not been proven out. So I would say there's still quite a few out there available. What you are also seeing is early appetite that needs to be filled, and over time, I don't think any one company will acquire similar assets of the same kind and replicate those. So, lots of reasons why. But the reality is, new technologies are going to be born every day. People are going to experiment with new things, so that engine could keep going.

[Keith Frances Bachman:]

Right. All right. Thanks, gentlemen. Best of luck to you.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Thank you.

[Edward J. Fitzpatrick:]

Thanks, Keith.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Bryan Bergin with Cowen. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Bryan C. Bergin:]

Hi. Thank you. Good afternoon.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Good afternoon, Bryan.

[Bryan C. Bergin:]

Can you give us an update on just client behavior with respect to the policy and the regulatory uncertainty, their approach on sequencing as far as the cases you noted in the prior quarter commentary?

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

So Bryan, unfortunately I'm going to say it's all of the above permutations and combinations. So let's start with -- there are a whole range of clients who really basically stepped back and said, okay, what does this is mean, and then having spent 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 8 weeks debating it internally came back and said, we still have the same goals so let's now continue. The sensitivity and et cetera, et cetera, has always been part of our industry. So yes, it is raised, but is that any different? I don't think so. In the end, the actions are similar. There are a few other clients who said I want to change my sequence and why don't we actually first do digital transformation and hear that (54

[Bryan C. Bergin:]

Okay. Okay. Just my follow-up then. Just an update on digital assets, how you're finding the ability to scale those in commercial applications.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

So Bryan, the specific choices that we made in terms of the 12 technologies that we'd like to go after and either build capabilities or partner or acquire were very carefully chosen. And we actually parsed them into those 3 buckets

[Bryan C. Bergin:]

All right. Thanks, Tiger.

[N. V. Tyagarajan:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Steven Schneiderman with Bank of Montréal. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Steven Schneiderman:]

Hi. You can withdraw my question. Thank you.

[Operator:]

We have no more questions at this time and I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Sachs for any closing remarks.

[Roger Sachs:]

Thanks, Michelle. And thank you, everybody, for joining us today. We look forward to speaking to you again next quarter.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. Thank you so much for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.