EPAM Systems Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 9, 2024

There are 18 speakers on the call.

Operator

Thank you for standing by. My name is Eric, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Q1 2024 EPAM Systems Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

Operator

Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call over to David Strobby, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. By now, you should have received your copy of the earnings release for the company's Q1 2024 results. If you have not, a copy is available on epam.com in the Investors section. With me on today's call are Akari Dopton, CEO and President and Jason Peterson, Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to remind those listening that some of the comments made on today's call may contain forward looking statements.

Speaker 1

These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties as described in the company's earnings release and SEC filings. Additionally, all references to reported results that are non GAAP measures have been reconciled to comparable GAAP measures and are available in our quarterly earnings materials located in the Investors section of our website. With that said, I'd like to now turn the call over to Ark.

Speaker 2

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. First, about our guidance change. As you saw from our press release, we are seeing some continuing volatility in our global demand environment.

Speaker 2

And while there are encouraging signs of new deals and new types of very different domain specific demands, then even in cyclical nature of 2023 follow us well in 2024, which now leads us to adjust our thinking for both Q2 and for all full year outlook. As I mentioned during our Q4 earnings call, our initial view was the 2024 environment will be at least for the first half of the year, a continuation of second part of 2023 trends with the potential demand upturn right after. And that would take us into sequential growth for 2024. This view, which we now believe was optimistic, was supported by broadly anticipated more positive macro assumptions and our active interactions with the clients during the very end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024. That was directing our belief that clients will more quickly come back to growth in their prioritization for the remainder of 2024.

Speaker 2

We also believed that once we entered Q2, we would have much more measurable indicators for the improvements of the demand environment for digital engineering, data, cloud and AI and from which we can build further our 2024 revenue scenarios and plans. What we now understand is that the macroeconomic and geopolitical factors that continue to drive volatility in overall markets and specifically in the IT Services and Digital Transformation sectors are still with us throughout the remainder of the year. While the programs we anticipated to start by now are still in place and some are in active discussions, many of them have been postponed to future periods or decided to be implemented in much more modest scopes. In addition, we need for rebalancing our delivery platform to lower cost locations, force some level of slowdown in our revenue growth too. And so our expectation for considerably higher level of accelerated revenue trends in 2nd part of the year will not be materializing as we anticipated, at least as we see it now.

Speaker 2

Jason will provide more details in our updated outlook for 2024. But let me share some current highlights of our business from Q1 up to today. Throughout the last quarter and continuing into now, we've been making progress across all critically important areas for us, which were discussed in-depth during our previous call. We are strengthening and repositioning our talent delivery platform as well as the cost effectiveness of our offerings by rebalancing our talent distribution from more expensive locations to less expensive ones, while maintaining our commitment to our traditionally strong deals. India, our 2nd largest delivery location is growing rapidly not only in terms of headcount, but also by creating new capability centers in data cloud, digital transformation and AI enabled managed services.

Speaker 2

We recently opened our Gurugram office and plan to open additional locations to support our client growing needs. LATAM is another of our stated priorities in overall rebalancing. As we refine and expand our locations there, we're expanding our key engineering DNA capabilities in the region. In the Q4, we announced the acquisition of Vatus, a multi award winning software development company with offices in Argentina and Chile. We are continuously investing in our existing and new technical capabilities, including crucial for the future Gen AI, data NML and predictive AI and in correspondent IP development.

Speaker 2

We also continue to improve our domain industry capabilities in consulting and advisory services. During the beginning of 2024, we have seen encouraging signs of more balanced demand environment across our business with both new and existing logos, equally weighted between cost takeout and business change and modernization. This portfolio wide perspective combined with our efforts to establish domain specific and relevant approaches for go to market both independently and with our partners leads us to believe that our ongoing reinvestment in consulting experience cloud data, AI and vertical edge solutions will provide the unique edge we need to secure long term growth. Couple short stories to illustrate above. EPAM recently came up with AWS helping a leading energy company in the U.

Speaker 2

K. To transform its customer experience, responding to a market that is characterized by the need for enhanced customer expectations, emerging competitors, regulatory demands, smart metering adoption and sustainability goals. Our engagement was built around key transformations of payment channels, customer service frameworks and shift to agile processes to ensure service flexibility. For Enew logo, one of the world's best known global car rental brands, we are helping to redesign a critical data platform that will enhance intelligent real time pricing capabilities and drive better experiences for customers and further increasing their price and market leadership. We believe it is the next iteration of platform engineering into truly intelligent application empowered by AI that will drive the future of our demand.

Speaker 2

Finally, in another encouraging sign, our long term clients are also returning to us with newer streams related to modernization and next gen support, which now include much expanded engagement footprint with largest shares of India and Latin America, including net new delivery locations in Argentina and Brazil. In general, our focus on domain led propositions is the reason why we believe we saw much stronger growth in some verticals this past quarter. For example, in our Healthcare and Life Science portfolio, we are part of a number of strategic programs helping clients in areas of cloud, data platform, physical and digital product development and engineering as well as a new JN AI driven initiatives. On another side, in some of our verticals, namely Business Information and Media, we continue to work through the impact of rundowns from a few large clients initiated previously. And while we aren't able yet to access this with revenue coming from new opportunities, we are still seeing a more balanced picture emerging over the course of the next quarters.

Speaker 2

Across all our verticals and geos, we are seeing more interest in higher level of program starts related to generative AI. In Q1, a number of our key clients formally selected PAM as strategic partners for their AI transformation in Journeys, where EPAM will help to scale AI, including GenAI to unlock the power of data and to establish valuable insights. These engagements are often starting today from advisory and from the use of our differentiated IP and then ramping up to specific use cases. We believe that will lead us to new level of engagement with our buyers, we're aligned to drive meaningful business breakthroughs with our tools and in combination with our consulting and scale delivery capabilities. And while the revenue impact of these programs is still limited today, we see it's a very visible progression of the AI enabled services market for us.

Speaker 2

To summarize, while in Q1 across our core business, we were seeing a more balanced demand outlook than in the most part of 2023 And a gradual return to modernization and business change programs as well as the ranking of generic related opportunities. As mentioned already today, By the end of Q1, we realized that the speed and scale of those changes were not in line with our early expectations. Moving to how we are managing our business in this part of the cycle. As we focus on driving new demand and proactively converting and expanding our wallet share of these clients, we are also looking for opportunities to drive efficiency and focus throughout the organization. We have shared our ongoing efforts to rebalance the business from a geographical perspective over the course of last year, and that program is ongoing.

Speaker 2

Our attention now is starting toward a more finely tuned approach to both geographic investment as well as our areas of capability in market, particularly around our stated market segments, AI, cloud, data, experience and domain led consulting. We've gone to market in much more intentional way with key proposition and strategic partners and are now looking to refine some of those propositions and investment as we look to balance near term and long term demand with our investment. Throughout the remainder of this year, we will be focusing on driving enhanced efficiency and further rebalancing of our geographical footprint, resizing portions of our in market and some other teams, enhancing operational efficiencies and engineering productivity through application of AI and automation internally at the farm and driving a singular focus on client centricity for the entire company. Those continual efforts are critically important as we navigate the current environment, while taking the necessary steps for the eventual return for built and transformed programs, which have been slowed down during the last 2 years. Our fundamentals are strong and we are firmly confident that EPAN will be in a lead position in this rebound, enabled by our significantly diversified global delivery platform and driven by long term pressures for legacy modernization, needs for advanced customer centric solutions and the significant interest in applying and integrating Gen AI and General AI capabilities into new and existing enterprise platforms, innovative intelligent applications and new transformative business models.

Speaker 2

With that, let me pass to Jason to provide details on our Q1 results and our guidance for 2024.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Ark, and good morning, everyone. In the Q1, EPAM generated revenue of $1,165,000,000 a year over year decrease of 3.8% on a reported basis or 4.3% in constant currency terms, reflecting a favorable foreign exchange impact of 50 basis points. Due to our exit from the Russian market, we no longer generate revenue from Russian clients. The impact of this exit had an approximate 50 basis point negative impact on year over year revenue growth. Excluding Russia revenues, year over year revenue for reported and constant currency would have decreased by 3.3% and 3.8%, respectively.

Speaker 3

Moving to our vertical performance. Life Sciences and Healthcare delivered very strong year over year growth of 26%. Growth in the quarter was driven by clients in both Life Sciences and Healthcare. To reflect a more diverse end market, our travel and consumer vertical has been renamed consumer goods, retail and travel. On a year over year basis, the vertical decreased 6.9%, largely due to declines in retail, partially offset by solid growth in travel.

Speaker 3

Sequentially, the vertical grew modestly driven by solid sequential growth in the travel portion of the portfolio. Software and high-tech contracted 8.3% year over year and grew 2.6% on a sequential basis, suggesting some level of stability in the vertical. Financial Services decreased 10.3% year over year driven by declines in Banking, Asset Management and the payment sector. Business Information and Media declined 15.8% compared to Q1 in 2023. Revenue in the quarter was substantially impacted by the previously discussed ramp down of the top 20 clients.

Speaker 3

And finally, our emerging verticals delivered solid year over year growth of 12.9 percent, driven by clients in energy and telecom. From a geographic perspective, Americas, our largest region representing 59% of our Q1 revenues declined 2.4% year over year on a reported and constant currency basis. Sequentially, growth was 2.4%, reflecting ongoing signs of stabilization in the geography. EMEA, representing 39 percent of our Q1 revenues, contracted 3.2% year over year and 4.8% in constant currency. And finally, APAC declined 13.1% year over year or 11.5% in constant currency terms and now represents 2% of our revenues.

Speaker 3

Revenue in the quarter was impacted primarily by the ramp down of work within our financial services vertical. In Q1, revenues from our top 20 clients declined 8.6% year over year, while revenues from clients outside our top 20 declined 1%. The relatively stronger performance of this latter group was driven by both new logo revenue and inorganic revenue contributions. Moving down the income statement. Our GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 28.4% compared to 29.3% in Q1 of last year.

Speaker 3

Non GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 30.4% compared to 31.5% for the same quarter last year. Gross margin in Q1 2024 was negatively impacted by foreign exchange due to strengthening of currencies in certain of our delivery locations. Additionally, the inability to adjust prices after EPAM's Q2 2023 promotion campaign continues to have a negative impact on profitability. GAAP SG and A was 17% of revenue compared to 17.5% in Q1 of last year. Non GAAP SG and A in Q1 2024 came in at 14.1 percent of revenue compared to 15.3% in the same period last year.

Speaker 3

SG and A improvement in the quarter is a result of our ongoing focus on managing our cost base and increasing efficiency in our spend. GAAP income from operations was $111,000,000 or 9.5 percent of revenue in the quarter compared to $120,000,000 dollars or 9.9 percent of revenue in Q1 of last year. Non GAAP income from operations was $174,000,000 or 14.9 percent of revenue in the quarter compared to $178,000,000 or 14.7 percent of revenue in Q1 of last year. Our GAAP effective tax rate for the quarter came in at 6%, which included a higher level of excess tax benefits related to stock based compensation. Non GAAP effective tax rate was 23.4%.

Speaker 3

Diluted earnings per share on a GAAP basis was 1.97 dollars Our non GAAP diluted EPS was $2.46 compared to $2.47 in Q1 of last year, reflecting a $0.01 decrease year over year. In Q1, there were approximately 58,900,000 diluted shares outstanding. Turning to our cash flow and balance sheet. Cash flow from operations for Q1 was $130,000,000 compared to $87,000,000 in the same quarter of 2023. Cash flow from operations in the quarter reflected a lower level of variable compensation payout related to 2023.

Speaker 3

Free cash flow was $123,000,000 compared to free cash flow of $79,000,000 in the same quarter last year. At the end of Q1, DSO was 73 days and compares to 71 days for Q4 2023 and 69 days for the same quarter last year. The uptick in DSO reflects an increase in the time some clients are taking in the review and approval of payments. Share repurchases in the Q1 were approximately 396,000 shares for $121,000,000 at an average price of $304.21 per share. As of March 31, we had approximately $214,000,000 of share repurchase authority remaining.

Speaker 3

We ended the quarter with approximately $2,000,000,000 in cash and cash equivalents. Moving on to a few operational metrics. We ended Q1 with more than 47,050 consultants, designers, engineers and architects, a decline of 8% compared to Q1 2023. This is the result of lower levels of hiring combined with both voluntary and involuntary attrition as we continue to balance supply and demand. Our total headcount for the quarter was more than 52,800 employees.

Speaker 3

Utilization was 76.8% compared to 74.9% in Q1 of last year and 74.4% in Q4 2023. Now let's turn to our business outlook. We are continuing to see a modest improvement in demand. However, client decision making continues to be cautious and demand is not improving to the degree expected when we set our original 2024 guidance. At that time, based on the modest sequential growth achieved in Q4 2023 and our forecast of modest growth in Q1, we expected Q2 to show flat to modest sequential improvement, followed by solid sequential growth averaging at least 3% for Q3 and Q4.

Speaker 3

As a reminder, based on the sequential declines in 2023 quarterly revenue, we needed to generate regular sequential growth in 2024 to produce year over year growth. For the remainder of the year with limited demand improvement, we now expect seasonal factors to have a more pronounced impact on sequential revenue growth, with Q2 showing a modest decline, Q3 improving, followed by flat to a possible modest decline in revenues in Q4. Additionally, although we are seeing some modest incremental contribution to revenue from recently completed acquisitions, that contribution is largely offset by foreign exchange headwinds resulting from the ongoing strength of the U. S. Dollar.

Speaker 3

We're maintaining our focus on demand generation and revenue growth throughout 2024. In 2024, we will incur incremental costs related to compensation. Additionally, lower utilization of prepayments in market resources and some ongoing pricing pressure will continue to negatively impact gross margins. However, we are committed to running the business at a profitability level of at least 15% for non GAAP adjusted IFO. We are planning to initiate additional cost savings measures to ensure that we can achieve our profit objectives while still focusing on long term growth.

Speaker 3

Finally, our operations in Ukraine continue to run at high levels of utilization, a testament to our team's dedication and focus on maintaining uninterrupted quality of delivery. Our guidance assumes that we will continue to be able to deliver from our Ukraine delivery centers at productivity levels similar to levels achieved in 2023. Moving to our full year outlook. Revenue is now expected to be in the range of $4,575,000,000 to 4,675,000,000 a negative growth rate of 1.4 percent at the midpoint of the range. The impact of foreign exchange on growth is now expected to have a negative impact of approximately 30 basis points.

Speaker 3

At this time, we expect approximately 1% of revenue contribution from already completed acquisitions. We expect GAAP income from operations will now be in the range of 10% to 10.5% and non GAAP income from operations will now be in the range of 15% to 15.5%. We expect our GAAP effective tax rate will now be 20%. Our non GAAP effective tax rate, which excludes excess tax benefits related to stock based compensation, will continue to be 24%. Earnings per share, we expect the GAAP diluted EPS will now be in the range of $7.34 to $7.64 for the full year, and we are focused on maintaining non GAAP diluted EPS so as to remain in the range of $10 to $10.30 for the full year.

Speaker 3

We now expect weighted average share count of 58,700,000 fully diluted shares outstanding. Moving to our Q2 2024 outlook. We expect revenue to be in the range of 1.135 dollars to $1,145,000,000 producing a year over year decline of 2.6% at the midpoint of the range with the expected impact of foreign exchange to be negative 0.6%. For the Q2, we expect GAAP income from operations to be in the range of 9% to 10% and non GAAP income from operations to be in the range of 13.5 percent to 14.5%. We expect GAAP effective tax rate to be approximately 25% and our non GAAP effective tax rate to be approximately 24%.

Speaker 3

For earnings per share, we expect GAAP diluted EPS to be in the range of $1.52 to $1.60 for the quarter and non GAAP diluted EPS to be in the range of 2 point $2.1 to $2.29 for the quarter. We expect a weighted average share count of 58,800,000 diluted shares outstanding. Finally, a few key assumptions that support our GAAP to non GAAP measurements for the remainder of the year. Stock based compensation expense is expected to be approximately $38,000,000 for Q2, dollars 46,000,000 for Q3 and dollars 47,000,000 for Q4. Amortization of intangibles is expected to be approximately $6,000,000 for each of the remaining quarters.

Speaker 3

The impact of foreign exchange is expected to be a $1,000,000 loss for each of the remaining quarters. Tax effect of non GAAP adjustments is expected to be around $10,000,000 for Q2 $11,000,000 for each of the remaining quarters. We expect excess tax benefits to be around $1,000,000 for Q2 $1,700,000 for each of the remaining quarters. We expect incremental restructuring charges in the second half of twenty twenty four and at this time cannot estimate the amounts with reasonable certainty. We expect to provide detailed estimates during our Q2 call.

Speaker 3

Incremental restructuring charges are currently not included in our guidance. However, these charges will not impact our non GAAP results. Finally, one more assumption outside of our GAAP to non GAAP items. With our significant cash position, we are generating a healthy level of interest income and are now expecting interest in other income to be approximately $15,000,000 for Q2, dollars 20,000,000 for Q3 $15,000,000 for Q4. While we work our way through the cycle of lower demand, we will continue to run EPAM efficiently, positioning the company to capitalize on a more normalized demand environment.

Speaker 3

Lastly, my continued thanks to all of our employees for their dedication and focus on serving our clients and driving results for EPAM. Operator, let's open the call up for questions.

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Brian Bergin with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Thank you. Wanted to start with some more detail on the change in the growth outlook here and ultimately trying to unpack attribution here to macro market driven slowness versus more idiosyncratic factors to your turnaround and your exposure. Can you talk about whether this is really broad based across the portfolio or more so due to a handful of larger client specific slowdowns? And is there any attribution to a change in clients' reception to Ukraine or Belarus delivery?

Speaker 5

Thank you. I think in our opening remarks, we exactly reflecting what was happening from our standpoint. I think based on the Q4 level of activity, I would say. And beginning of Q1, we were trying to predict how potential growth would look like versus conversation and understanding the opportunities. So in the second part of Q1, at the same time, we realized that many programs were delayed and some of them were started, but at very different level of this call.

Speaker 5

And that was put us in the position to not try to predict the future market and economic trends and other things, but actually focus on what we see right now. And with all this volatility, put our guidance in more realistic scenario based on what we really know. So there is nothing happening kind of what we're not losing clients, we're not having some unexpected problems. So there are some more specific trends when we're increasing India share of our delivery. So there are foreign exchange, there are vacations and billable hours availability in Q2.

Speaker 5

And that's I can pass to Jason to more details.

Speaker 6

Yes, Brian, I think what Art said is that we're at this point rather than trying to predict that there's going to be an improvement in demand, we're just taking kind of what we see today, which is still client decision making is slow, budgets are being partially released, some programs are being descoped. And so we're just not seeing quite the improvement that obviously we had hoped for. So obviously, it was a miss on our part. The one thing that Ark referenced which we've talked about over the last couple of quarters, but we've now been able to do some more analysis on it is we still see strong sufficient demand for Ukraine, Poland locations like that. So utilization is still very good in the Ukraine for instance.

Speaker 6

However, we are seeing more pronounced growth in India. And so what in the calculations that we've done over the last couple of weeks, what we're seeing is that an ongoing mix shift towards India, particularly for new engagements, is beginning to produce a bit of a headwind in terms of our revenue growth rate measured in dollars. And so that is beginning to show up in terms of a sequential impact and a somewhat larger impact for the full year. Some of that was anticipated when we did the guidance, but my guess is probably not fully.

Speaker 4

Okay. Okay. That's very good detail. Appreciate that. My follow-up here is partly on that.

Speaker 4

So as you're refining the global operations and rebalancing the delivery platform, if I heard correctly, it sounds like the structure became a bit too distributed across countries and you're trying to rein that in. Can you just add more color on what how long this may ultimately take? And then Jason, just on that last point, are you able to quantify how much the shift to the lower cost locations weighs on this year's growth?

Speaker 6

Yes. So, and again, it's a calculation that if we think of a constant currency calculation where we go to the mix were the same as in 2023. In 2024, what would the impact be? Again, I do want to confirm that we still have demand for Central Europe and Eastern Europe. But again, a lot of the incremental demand due to client sensitivity is coming into India.

Speaker 6

It could be something approaching $100,000,000 if you did a constant currency impact on a year over year basis. India continues to I'm just going to step ahead to the obvious next questions. How profitable is India? Is that a drag on profitability? The cost structure is lower in India, the bill rates are lower in India, but the profitability in India is still very solid.

Speaker 6

So it's not driving down profitability by any means, but what it is doing is beginning to produce some headwinds against revenue growth. Some of that again would have been anticipated in our regular in our traditional guidance or guidance we provided at the beginning of the year. My guess is it wasn't fully anticipated.

Speaker 5

Okay, understood. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Lee with Guggenheim Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Given the way you position the demand environment in your prepared remarks, what in your customer conversations gives you confidence that you're able to achieve sequential growth in 3Q and potentially flat 4Q? And is 3Q dynamic more of a function of build days?

Speaker 5

You're talking about sequential growth in Q3.

Speaker 6

Yes, Jonathan. So just to the question about whether or not we see sequential growth in Q3. The way we have laid out the guidance, okay, really is the sequential factors are going to drive. And so the Q2 to Q3 growth would substantially be driven by seasonality, which is more available bill days in Q3.

Speaker 7

Thanks for that. And just a follow-up, I want to build on Brian's earlier question. You're seeing your India expansion actually take place. Are you comfortable with the level of delivery quality harmonization that you're seeing there given you've highlighted that in the past and how much more work needs to happen there?

Speaker 6

Ken, I think we feel quite good about the quality of our India delivery and we think it's differentiated, okay, our India versus let's say our peers or competitors India. We still feel very good about the quality of our Eastern European delivery and we do clearly have a number of clients who still prefer Eastern Europe, but we feel good about the work that we've done in India to differentiate. And again, we've got good ability to continue to scale the geography and we have relatively low levels of attrition.

Speaker 7

Appreciate the detail there. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Maggie Nolan with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Hi, thank you. I understand the commentary about the rate cards in India and how that's impacting your top line. But it also sounded like there were some delays, some push outs of projects. It didn't sound like much in the way of cancellations, which is encouraging. But I'm trying to understand were there particular types of projects, particular verticals in that vein that drove your change in expectations?

Speaker 5

So I think it's broadened. There is no specific on verticals. We actually highlighted that there are some verticals which impacted by decisions which were done practically in previous period. There are some verticals which operate better like we highlighted healthcare life science as well, energy for example, as we said bucket. So but in general, it's pretty broad cautious.

Speaker 5

And again, number of programs which we expected to jump start in Q2, delayed or again, whether put down kind of in the scope of implementation. But conversations happening, there is no cancellation cancellations, but there are definitely delays and slowness in decisions.

Speaker 6

And the feedback that we're getting is that certain clients, although they appear to have budget or sort of slow to begin to activate the budget. And I would say probably if we were to talk to a specific portion of the portfolio, we had feared that at some point we may see more caution in Europe. And I think that's where we're seeing kind of a relative change in the business. Deakin' Market America does feel like it's stabilized and we did see sequential growth as we talked about in our prepared remarks. But what we're beginning to see is some incremental weakness in our European pullout.

Speaker 8

Okay. Thank you. And then you've obviously made some changes in terms of pricing, in terms of delivery. You've been putting extra attention on some of your largest, longest duration clients. So is there any notable change in client retention or win rates?

Speaker 8

Are those progressing differently than they were roughly a year ago when you announced some of the changes that you intended to make?

Speaker 5

I think we just can kind of repeat this. In general, there is no any kind of dramatic changes. Mostly, it's attributed to delayed decisions and very specific things like you were talking about Q2, which we already shared it. It's billable hours, it's effects, it's multiple parameters, which is calculatable. So the rest of this, in line with what we were saying before.

Speaker 5

But again, decisions slow down and now we're trying to project exactly what we see versus what we kind of think in white cover.

Speaker 6

Yes. And clearly, no longer have the confidence of sequential demand improvement in the second half the way we had when we were guided.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Surinder Thind with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Thank you. Is there any color that you can provide on intra quarter trends in 1Q in the sense of how the quarter started? And then at what point did you kind of start to see plants begin to push off projects? Any color there would be helpful.

Speaker 3

Yes. Maybe what I'll

Speaker 6

do is, I unpack, I guess, is the word I'll use, what happened in Q1. So we entered Q1 with the guide that we had. And we expected that we probably could get to the top or maybe a little bit above the high end of the range and it come in with a range that we wanted to make sure that we could make. What we saw during the quarter is that things were a little bit slower than expected and we did get some benefit from foreign exchange, which I would size at about $2,000,000 and just a modest amount of M and A contribution that was not in our original guide and that would be about $800,000 So if you adjusted for those two factors, we're pretty much closer to the middle point of the range, pretty much at consensus rather than this revenue beat. So things were a little bit slower than we expected in Q1, not much, but somewhat.

Speaker 6

We have been able to calculate that this India shift even showed up in sort of sequential impact. And as Ark said, we're at this point, we're just not willing to continue to guide with an assumption that we're going to see improving demand. And we but we are seeing stability in the portfolio and probably feel a little bit of improvement if you adjust for the shift towards India.

Speaker 9

Thank you. And then in terms of just understanding trends within the top 20 clients versus those outside the top 20, you called out a pretty material difference in the growth rates. Part of that, I believe you attributed to just the acquisition, but also others to new logo activity. Just any color on how much new logos are contributing to the growth at this point and just where things are within the cycle there?

Speaker 6

Yes. And so let me talk about the top 20. So the top 20 does have a significant number of business information and media clients in it. That is a more challenged portion of the portfolio, I would say, due to their end markets. In addition to the client that we talked about over the last couple of quarters that have ramped down in Q1 and again in Q2 as they kind of exit.

Speaker 6

We and again, this is all known and we've talked about, okay, but we are seeing some reduction in spend and other business information media clients in Europe and that is the top 20 clients. So those things kind of show up. And then from a new logo standpoint, part of what's going on in North America is against stability in the existing client portion of the portfolio, but we are beginning to see growth in North America in terms of new logo revenues. And then Europe, there's an awful lot of activity, but generally it's kind of smaller in size from a contribution standpoint. Again, encouraging, but obviously not enough to drive the type of growth rate we had originally expected.

Speaker 10

Thank you.

Operator

Next question comes from the line of Jason Kupferberg with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Speaker 11

Good morning. I wanted to just stay on the India topic for a minute and talk about competition there. Obviously, it's pretty crowded just in terms of the vendor landscape and on a relative basis, EPAM is somewhat more of a newcomer. So curious to see how you see the competitive landscape there versus your more traditional service delivery geographies. And then just if we look at headcount mix, I think at the end of last year, Ukraine was still number 1 at 19%, India was 15%.

Speaker 11

I mean, do you think in the not so distant future, India could potentially become your largest country?

Speaker 5

I think we're very satisfied with our progress in India. So and by the end of the year, we might be closer to 20% of the total headcount. So it's still going to be the largest, fastest growing and probably will be on par with Ukraine or maybe larger than Ukraine. So from the currency perspective, we talked about it in the past many times. We invested there heavily and we're doing this for a long time and India become fastest growing location.

Speaker 5

I think even in 2021 or maybe even in 2019, I don't remember right now. But it was one of the fastest like way before market was down. So and we're also trying to build and we mentioned today, like not trying to build, we build significant data practice or we build significant digital engagement practice. So we put in all necessary things there to build generic practices as well. So it's a location which in Paris is all what we see in the new part additionally.

Speaker 5

And that's a differentiation as well because we're not trying to duplicate just kind of scale, but exactly the quality which we know. So there is different type of competition. At the same time, we also mentioned that our competition for Talenday is mostly captive and technology companies. And that's continuous to be for us as well. So I think in general very positive experience and we think it will play bigger and more important role.

Speaker 5

While we are very committed to our kind of talent which we built over the years in Europe. And as we said before, we probably will be the most kind of diverse from the target perspective company in our sector.

Speaker 6

Right. The only thing I'll add to that, similar to what we do in Eastern Europe, we don't seek to be the lowest cost provider in any market in which we operate. Again, we differentiated quality in India and we charge a premium relative to other peers kind of India rates based on what we believe is a differentiated offering there.

Speaker 11

Okay. And I think in response to an earlier question, you said that your win rate on new logos is intact, which is good to hear. I'm just curious whether you've seen any material change in your wallet share within say your top 20 existing clients?

Speaker 5

There are clients who like Piyush, there are several clients which we mentioned already. So but in general, I think it's very good position from wallet share point of view. We have visible increase in some of the clients. We have pretty good stability in another. And again, there are some companies which we mentioned before, which make like long term decision.

Speaker 5

And we've seen actually visible slowdown in the execution kind of like when decrease happening with us and there are couple which turned back and start into growing with us. So I think we're pretty comfortable is what we're doing with our top 20. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Mosk Kapsy with Wedbush Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hey Moshe, how are you doing? Thanks.

Speaker 12

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. So the pipeline is there, it's just not converting at the pace that you guys expected it to be and you have some deferrals out there. The question here is and obviously the environment is pretty fluid. How quickly can these be switched around?

Speaker 12

Let's say the Fed's got rates, let's say the macro volatility kind of maybe is improving. How quickly can these programs get back on board? Just again, it's just what I'm hearing, Tim, is just that the men in garment is pretty fluid and obviously things can turn on and off pretty quickly. How would you see that? How would you characterize that?

Speaker 5

That's exactly what we said already. We don't want to predict anymore. So we try to be more kind of pragmatic in this situation. Historically, better than us, volatility and change in demand could be very fast. I'm not sure that it will be very fast in this current environment, but I only can repeat what you were saying before that.

Speaker 5

The whole point for us starting from all this thing during the last couple of years to prepare ourselves well when environment will change. That's why we very carefully kind of managing all our capabilities necessary for this restart if needed. And I think that's why in general we feel very comfortable that fundamental there that we are actually becoming better company from diversification of our risks from our delivery kind of capabilities. And again, the real change will happen when demand will change. And again, that could happen relatively fast, but let's see, right?

Speaker 5

I don't have any more opinion right now.

Speaker 12

Okay. That's fair. And then just a follow-up. Last quarter, you spoke about some clients that were coming back to EPAM. Originally, EPAM clients, when they expanded scope, they went somewhere else and they came back.

Speaker 12

Are you continuing to see the same trend throughout this quarter?

Speaker 5

Yes. This is happening and this is happening not necessary just when clients come back. It's also happening when clients were going down and now become comfortable with our kind of restructuring of delivery and started to come back to us. It's not huge things, but it's very positive message. And another thing that the developments vision to some new locations very open as well as that's again exactly not necessary optically visible from proportional revenue growth because we're doing more work in India.

Speaker 5

And I think that's exactly what we were planned to do to make sure that we stabilize and that we protect in our market share and clients. But relative to your question, yes, this is continuously Understood. Thank you.

Speaker 6

Thanks, Moshe.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ramsey El Assal with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Could you provide some additional color on margins and the margin cadence as we progress through the year? If you could help us with that would be appreciated.

Speaker 6

Yes. So in Q2, we've got the lower build as we talked about and that usually does have a depressive effect on margins. And so right now for Q2, I am expecting that we could be at 30% gross margin or slightly below that on a non GAAP basis. I think for the first half of twenty twenty four, you'll see gross margins around 32%. And then the second half, I think you'd see margins in the 32% to 33% range.

Speaker 6

And that would kind of blend us into this sort of 31% to 32%. So again, you'll see somewhat improving margins as we continue to focus on our costs and at the same time you get a little bit of benefit from the stronger build days in the

Operator

second half.

Speaker 10

Thank you. And a quick follow-up. A lot of your peers who are also calling out big demand headwinds right now, they view these headwinds in terms of sort of discretionary headwinds versus non discretionary spend, do you have a view of your own portfolio in that context? What percentage of your portfolio is sort of discretionary?

Speaker 6

Yes, I guess it all depends on how you define that. We've never as I think we all know we had a large portfolio of multiyear maintenance or multiyear BPO or that type of thing. So a lot of our work generally is kind of newer build digital. And as we've talked about the modernization programs, which we still believe are generally intact, okay, but are slow to ramp. In some cases, as Ark indicated, is that people have kind of descoped some of those programs.

Speaker 6

So we still think that demand is in the future. But arguably when it comes to discretion, you can certainly delay those programs and expenditures.

Speaker 10

Fair enough. Thanks so much.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Potter with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Speaker 13

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I want to start on pricing. Have you seen any changes to the pricing environment since last earnings? And are you still offering some discounting to win business in certain areas like you were in the past? Just trying to figure out if you're finding a greater presence from certain lower cost locations like India, it's leading maybe to some client pushback on current arrangements or if the pricing pressure is more on net new engagements?

Speaker 5

Yes. We believe the pricing environment did not improve. So as the only improvement could happen if demand will go up. So as with the current status quo, I think pricing environment is pretty tough and challenging continuously. So

Speaker 6

not incrementally worse, but it continues to be challenging. It's one of the reasons why there is kind of a bias towards India at the lower bill rates. In the market is with what I would call kind of an imbalance in supply and demand. It continues to be a less friendly market when it comes to trying to get rate increases for certain.

Speaker 13

Got it. And a follow-up on, I guess, on your investment level and kind of net hiring. Now that you're seeing more of a challenging demand environment, will you look to dial back some of the growth investments you were trying to do when you started the year or refranchise those? And then from a headcount perspective, are you expecting headcount to decrease further sequentially off these levels? Are you likely to kind of maintain the bench you have to meet demand as it returns?

Speaker 5

I think you'll see us

Speaker 6

continue to invest in India as we've talked on this call. I think you'll see us continue to increase our position in Latin America. I think, James Bank and I implied this or I think maybe even stated it in our prepared remarks is that with this kind of budget caution with clients, we are seeing less demand for in market resources that continues to be a place where we do have more bench than we would like. So that's a bit of a challenge for us. And again, I think what you see us do at least for the coming couple of quarters is to continue to invest more in again India and Latin America.

Speaker 6

We still think that there's a demand environment in our future for Central Eastern Europe and also for market. But today it certainly continues to be a challenging environment, particularly for the higher cost end market resources.

Speaker 14

Got it. Thanks.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of James Friedman with Susquehanna. Please go ahead.

Speaker 15

Hi. Thank you for taking the question. Jason, in your prepared remarks, you called out some of the trends in billing and on the DSO. I remember when you first started there, that was a big conversation. You improved that immeasurably.

Speaker 15

I'm just wondering is what's going on in the DSO? Is this something that we need to watch for bill like billability and collections?

Speaker 6

Yes. So we're really focused on managing that. And again, very careful to make certain that obviously our revenue recognition is appropriate and also that we're trying to avoid any potential kind of write off of AR. So I'm not concerned about that. What we are seeing is clients are taking more time to review and make payments and that type of thing.

Speaker 6

And I assume it's just based on the environment. And so we are trying to manage it, but I suspect that DSO is going to remain above 70 for the remainder of the year. Again, I don't have concerns about it either in terms of revenue recognition or potential write offs. Okay. But, yes, I wish we could maintain at 70% or 69% and I think that's a little bit unlikely in today's environment where everyone's kind of managing their cash flow a little bit more carefully.

Speaker 15

Got it. And then is there any way to unpack the revenue because you alluded to this, you both alluded to this in your prepared remarks, the ramp downs versus the sluggishness in everything else? Like how much is the ramp down dynamic impacting the revenue commentary and guidance?

Speaker 6

Well, so we had this the same customers that we talked about where a competitor has sort of taken over their IT function and that obviously had a step down on a year over year basis as well as quarterly sequential impact Q4 to Q1. There'll be another slightly sequential impact associated with that same client between Q1 and Q2. And then we've had a large big client who is continuing to sort of tighten up their spending and because they are a large client that they tighten up their spending. That's certainly reducing the level of revenue that we were generating from them and it is showing up in our growth rates. I don't know whether I'd call it kind of

Speaker 5

a ramp down, but certainly they're reducing the level of headcount. Just to kind of there is no any real impact from ground downs, which kind of new to us. There is a redistribution of delivery and we talked about it when there is a switch to lower cost locations. There are new business which are faster growing there as well and this is all related again to pricing environment. So but no ramp downs right now not as a real factor.

Speaker 16

Got it.

Speaker 6

All right. Thank you.

Speaker 5

It's more like a normal like it's always good to happen, it's happening as well, but in a very normal way.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of James Faucette with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Speaker 14

Thank you very much this morning. I wanted to ask just in terms of your planning assumptions and kind of given the experiences of the last few quarters, how are you thinking about or how are you changing your planning assumptions in terms of pipeline, conversion rates or timing, etcetera, not just in terms of like what you're seeing right now, but are you building in more conservatism from that perspective? And how does that impact your planning from a hiring perspective, etcetera, right now?

Speaker 5

We definitely log in our lessons and we put much more pragmatic view. So because, yes, we were a little bit more optimistic in the past when market will come back. So right now, we're looking at this very pragmatically with a good level of strong level of kind of conservatism. And I don't know what to do yet. So I think that's actually exactly what is happening.

Speaker 5

We're looking for the next 90 days where we can predict it and predict the future based on this. And if by the end of the quarter situation will change, we will start doing this differently. Until we will see that general conditions is direction as you go at more like to one another direction.

Speaker 14

Great. That makes sense. And then in terms of like from a revenue perspective with the mixing geographic shifts and kind of pricing that your customers are asking for.

Speaker 6

Any sense

Speaker 14

for how long we should think about that being a revenue headwind? Do you have in your mind like, I guess, a distribution of delivery and when one might hit a stable level there?

Speaker 6

Let me comment and then Ark will probably say something much smarter and more insightful. So how I think about it is, it is going to be a trend that we're going to see throughout 2024, but I don't see it as a forever trend. At some point, I think it kind of stabilizes and I think that we've done a good job of sort of creating a balanced delivery with options or optionality for our clients. And at the same time, I still believe that there's demand for Central and Eastern Europe so far.

Speaker 5

Paul said before, we do believe that we will be able to put very well on the global delivery capability as well as from geographical point of view and equalize it as much as possible the quality kind of component of it. With this, it's again in our segment, in our IT services and specifically in kind of sub segment, which we believe we plan, which is more transformational platform build, complex enterprise solutions. Right now, difficult to use Gen AI and General AI enabled solutions, which we consider it upon playing and will be playing in the future. In this situation, it's all factor of changing in demand when actually our client base will feel that modernization is not just shift to cloud, but actually changes applications, changes the platforms to actually benefit from this with maximum. And this is very different level of the game.

Speaker 5

As soon as this will be happening, then demand for the talent will be equalized as well. And then it would be growing all over the place. And I think from this point of view, very similar to what Jason just said, I think India will be very big portion of the farm, but it will be balanced and demand will be coming to Central Europe and Eastern Europe and Latin America. And it would be all about the quality of delivery and kind of value per dollar versus just dollar per hour. And I think it should happen still we were hoping it would happen in kind of sooner.

Speaker 5

But I think all of us here on vendor side and investor side, I think we all believe that this will burn her up because there is no way right now.

Speaker 1

No, I think we are on track.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Arvind Ramnani with Piper Sandler.

Speaker 16

Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Yes, I just wanted to kind of really better understand when you kind of construct guidance, do you look at like do you go account by account? Like just trying to get an understanding of kind of the procedure to basically come up with guidance because kind of clearly kind of things have or are we just in an environment where things are just so fluid and the velocity of changes is something that's difficult to predict?

Speaker 6

Yes. And so it's hard to predict kind of moving quarters at this stage. We've talked about the unevenness or the choppiness or the in some cases, we've had programs that we have been awarded and then they either haven't started or as Art talked about, they've been scoped. We have clients who come back to us and said, we'd like you to do this, but in a lower cost geography. And again, all those things kind of impact the revenue growth rate.

Speaker 6

So again, there is a significant amount of sort of client level and RFP wind estimation and all that. But we're just finding that the demand environment continues not to evolve the way we had originally expected.

Speaker 16

Okay. That makes sense. And then just with kind of your years of cash, as you kind of think about doing additional M and A or basically doing kind of buybacks or just trying to see or is this just one of these things that you'll continue to build?

Speaker 6

Arvind, I'm going to be a little shorter of my response just because we're kind of at the end of the call or past time. But I would say yes to both. So you will see us continue to do more and more acquisitions that again are both strategic and do allow us to continue to expand our position both in end markets and in delivery locations. And you will also clearly see us do more buybacks in the coming quarters.

Speaker 16

Perfect. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Arvind. Appreciate it.

Speaker 17

And this concludes our Q and A session. I would like to turn the call back over to Arkady Dobkin for closing remarks.

Speaker 5

As always, thank you, everybody, for joining today. I think we're looking forward for the next call. And I think we're not going to bring surprises next time at least similar to today. Let's look pragmatically to everything. So fortunately, we didn't have any questions today about G and I and how we're doing there because we're doing pretty good and feel very good about this area.

Speaker 5

But probably we can spend more time on this topic next time. Thank you very much.

Speaker 17

This concludes today's conference call. Enjoy the rest of your day. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
EPAM Systems Q1 2024
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