Wipro Ltd (WIPRO) Q2 FY23 Earnings Concall Transcript

Wipro Ltd  ( NSE : WIPRO) Q2 FY23 Earnings Concall dated Oct. 18, 2023

Corporate Participants:

Dipak Kumar Bohra — Senior Vice President, Corporate Treasurer and Investor Relations

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

Aparna C. Iyer — Chief Financial Officer

Amit Choudhary — Chief Operating Officer

Subha Tatavarti — Chief Technology Officer

Analysts:

Kumar Rakesh — BNP Paribas — Analyst

Gaurav Rateria — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Dipesh Mehta — Emkay Global Financial Services — Analyst

Abhishek Kumar — JM Financial — Analyst

Girish Pai — Nirmal Bang Equities — Analyst

Sandeep Shah — Equirus Securities — Analyst

Ravi Menon — Macquarie Group — Analyst

Apurva Prasad — HDFC Securities — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Wipro Limited Q2 FY ’24 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]

I now hand the conference over to Mr. Dipak Bhora, Senior Vice President, Corporate Treasurer and Investor Relations. Thank you and over to you, sir.

Dipak Kumar Bohra — Senior Vice President, Corporate Treasurer and Investor Relations

Thank you, Yashashree. Warm welcome to our Q2 FY ’24 earnings call. We will begin the call with the business highlights and overview by Thierry Delaporte, our Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director; and a financial overview by our CFO, Aparna Iyer; followed by Amit Choudhary, our Chief Operating Officer. Afterwards, the operator will open the bridge for Q&A with our management team.

Before Thierry starts, let me draw your attention to the fact that during this call, we may make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Private Securities Litigation Reform Act 1995. These statements are based on management current expectations and are associated with uncertainties and risks, which may cause the actual results to differ materially from those expected. The uncertainties and risk factors are explained in our detailed filing with the SEC. Wipro does not undertake any obligation to update the forward-looking statements to reflect events and circumstances after the date of filing. The conference call will be archived and a transcript will be available on our website.

Over to you, Thierry.

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

Thank you, Dipak and good — actually, good morning or good afternoon, good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter earnings call. I’ll begin with an overview of this quarter’s results and detail of our sectoral performance, talk about the demand environment and some direction for the coming quarter. Our CFO, Aparna; and our COO, Amit, will join in with their comments as well, okay?

So Q2 was yet another quarter of strong deal bookings for us. Total contract value terms. We closed large deals to the tune of $1.3 billion. This is the highest in the last nine quarters, and this represents a 79% year-on-year growth and a 6% growth on a quarter-on-quarter basis. During the quarter, we booked 14 deals in the greater than $30 million TCV range versus 10 in the previous quarter. Total bookings from a TCV standpoint stand at $3.8 billion, which is also a growth of 6% year-on-year. We have added this quarter again one new account in the greater than $100 million client category in Q2. We now have 22 accounts in that bucket. If you remember, back in FY ’21, we had 11 $100 million accounts. So we’ve doubled the number of accounts in the $100 million category.

We’ve won also two close to $0.5 billion deals in two of our large accounts, as has been the case for several quarters now. Cash flow has remained strong at 145% of net income in Q2. EBIT, or earnings before tax and interest of our IT services segment, has increased 6% year-on-year. All of that gives us confidence that we’re winning in the market against a backdrop of economic weakness. The business environment, as you all know, has been uncertain. Inflation stood high as of interest rates. Clients are continuing to take a much more rigorous look at their investments. They are hyper-focused on efficiency, on optimization of existing investments and faster return on new ones.

Lower discretionary spending is a reality today. Conversion of order book has become slower. Transformation programs that are nearing their project term are being replaced by new ones, but at a slower pace. All of this has impacted our top line growth as well. In Q2, revenues declined 2% quarter-on-quarter in constant currency terms. But even though there’s some softness in top line growth. We are continuing to hold margin steady. Operating margin for the first half of FY ’24 was 16.1%. This is 110 [Phonetic] basis points higher than our operating margin in the first half of FY ’23 [Phonetic].

Now, let’s look at the performance of our four strategic market units. One in our Americas 1 market unit, revenue grew 1% quarter-on-quarter in constant currency terms, in Q2. This revenue growth was led by a strong performance in our healthcare business as well as in the technology products and platform business. Order bookings in terms of TCV grew 36% year-on-year. Our Americas 2 market unit, which has higher exposure to consulting clients and to the BFSI sector, saw a higher-than-usual impact of the macroeconomic slowdown. Revenues in Americas 2 declined 2.3% quarter-on-quarter in Q3.

Europe which has been our growth engine for the last two quarters — for our last two years, sorry, growing by 39% in FY ’22 and 12% in FY ’23, has also seen slowing demand and reprioritization of client spend, waiting [Phonetic] on the overall business. Revenues in this market declined 5% quarter-on-quarter. Having said that, we are seeing strong traction on the order [Phonetic] booking side, which in total contract value terms increased 10% in Q2 year-on-year. Given our strong bookings in this market, we are confident of a swift rebound.

Finally, in our APMEA business, revenues for the quarter declined 0.5% quarter-over-quarter. Our goal in this region is absolutely to capture the rapidly digitizing market. For that, we are leveraging our global scale and domain expertise to actually continue to move our portfolio towards higher-value transformation projects. This focus on improving the quality of revenue is now reflecting in our margin performance, which has improved 330 basis points over the last five quarters.

Being able to sustain margin despite software revenue is largely due to our ongoing transformation efforts. This includes several programs around delivery excellence and operational efficiencies. Across the board, we are pivoting our business towards high-quality, high-potential businesses and reducing our loss-making accounts. We are also working on faster bench deployment. In the last quarter, talent utilization increased to 84.5%, an improvement of 80 basis points quarter-over-quarter.

Third, our current [Phonetic] segmentation strategy, together with the One Wipro approach, is helping us seal bigger deals with existing clients and win in a consolidating market. And I’m proud that we are seeing these benefits within three months of moving to the new four global business line operating model. Amit will share more details shortly. Both on the delivery assurance and efficiency side, these actions are having an immediate positive impact while also setting us up for long-term margin resilience because profitable and sustainable growth is our top priority.

In Europe, we closed three large consolidation deal in Q2 at a 100% bid-to-win rate. For example, the global bank has selected Wipro as its partner to deliver multi-year digital transformation initiatives across business units. Wipro will work with the bank to build solutions to enhance its global products and services through responsible use of AI and also hyper-automation. This will deliver better customer experience, analytics, and drive significant operational efficiency.

Another important point to drag your attention on. Our partnership strategy continues to stay strong. Bookings through our partners as a percentage of total bookings have continued to increase quarter-after-quarter, from 25% in FY ’20 to 44% in FY ’23, and it was at 53% in Q2. Increasingly, clients are not just looking to migrate to the cloud, but also run and grow their businesses more efficiently on the cloud. Our FullStride Cloud services, which with its full-stack cloud offering, is setting us apart from competition and letting us tap into opportunities across the cloud journey.

For example, multi-national healthcare and insurance firms wants us to co-create the consumer and digital experience. As a strategic technology partner, we will build AI and automation solutions to drive speed-to-market, better client experience, and reduce their costs. Our high-performance software engineering program will bring them at least 20% more efficiency.

Now, if you look at the bigger picture in this, you will see that our ongoing transformation is driving a substantial improvement in our market position. And that’s in turn reflected in the types of deals we are winning. Clients now look to us to help them solution and orchestrate their transformation. They trust us with their complex challenges. That’s reflecting in the latest customer satisfaction survey as well with our NPS expanding by 840 basis points, which is quite substantial.

I’ll take a few minutes now to share an update on Wipro’s AI 360 strategy. Since our announcement last quarter, we’ve trained as many as 180,000 employees in basic Gen AI principles. We have rolled out personal-based learning pathways to create a pool of specialized talent with deeper technical expertise. We are working with our alliance partners to further enhance AI learning pathways through our AI and cloud academies. Recently also, we launched a new Gen AI Center of Excellence with IIT Delhi. We’re rapidly integrating Gen AI into our processes, our solutions, and our offerings. Thousands of our employees have or are starting to use Gen AI.

Let me give you examples. In the HR functions, our teams are seeing significant productivity gains by using Gen AI for candidate background verification. Then in marketing, we are using Gen AI for content generation and translation, tasks that used to take hours earlier now takes minutes. In sales, we’re deploying Gen AI for research to improve sales collaboration and to generate RFI responses. Now, in the engineering business, Gen AI is helping with software development and life cycle automation. One of the areas with the biggest productivity gain is in quality engineering and quality assurance testing. Gen AI is helping with scenario creation, code generation, synthetic data creation, as well as execution at scale.

Initial pilots of these Gen AI apps have been so successful that we are now rolling them out to all our employees. On the client front, Gen AI is now a part of every client conversation. There’s a tremendous interest in exploring new use cases, as well as understanding the benefits and implications of this technology. Today, we are seeing a doubling of Gen AI active projects than we did just one quarter ago. For now, we’re seeing rapid adoption in healthcare, consumer and financial services, but also in high-tech and utilities.

One example I can share with you here is the following. We are working with a US-based health insurer to deploy a Gen AI-based chatbot for their agents. We are developing a solution that is fine-tuned to be more contextual so that agents can provide more personalized assistance to every member. This solution is driving 30% to 40% reduction in operation costs, significant improvements in agent productivity, and improving net promoter scores. Another example, we’re working with a European multi-national telecom company to unlock value from data. Working with different vendor tools and software kits, we are generating high-quality synthetic data, which allows the client to not only increase cross-border collaboration, but also mitigate bias and eliminate distribution limitations that exist in real data.

As the technology evolve and Gen AI output becomes more accurate, we expect demand for our Gen AI services and expertise to increase greatly over the next six months to 12 months. Frankly, we’re very excited by the opportunity Gen AI presents, and we are investing in new use cases, solutioning for clients, as well as upskilling our employees, because we really want to take a leadership position in this space.

A word on our guidance now. For the next quarter, we are guiding for a sequential growth of minus 3.5% to minus 1.5% in constant currency terms. We expect margins to stay range-bound, as we’ve seen over the last few quarters. As the market starts to turn around, on the back of our transformation and efficiency plays, we expect to start seeing improvements in the coming quarters.

Despite the global slowdown across businesses, Wipro will continue to invest in its people through training opportunities, leadership development, global exposure to new clients and technologies, and by obviously also rewarding them with merit-based salary increases. Wipro’s intellectual capital, our people are our biggest strength. By continuing to strengthen our foundation, streamline our operations, and moving towards a more modern, dynamic culture, we have the right strategy and vision to keep us competitive and resilient.

With that, I’ll turn it over to Aparna for her comments. Thank you.

Aparna C. Iyer — Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Thierry. Good evening to everyone who’s joining us on the call today. In my update, I will quickly cover some key financial highlights for the quarter. To start with, on the revenues, our IT services revenue for Q2 declined 2% quarter-on-quarter in constant currency terms, which is at the lower end of the guided range for the quarter.

We reported yet another quarter of healthy deal bookings. In total contract value terms, we closed large deals to the tune of USD1.3 billion, which is a 79% year-on-year growth. We also booked 14 deals, which are greater than $30 million in TCV. Total bookings from a TCV standpoint stands at USD3.8 billion, which grew 6% year-on-year.

Turning to margins. Our ongoing focus on operational improvement has ensured that the margin remains steady, even in a softening revenue environment. Our operating margins for the second quarter was 16.1%, an expansion of 100 basis points year-on-year.

Shifting to our cash flow performance, our operating cash flow for Q2 is at INR38.6 billion, which is 145% of our net income. Our free cash flow as a percentage of net income was at 149%. Cash flow has been strong for the first half at 137% of net income. At the end of Q2, we had $4.1 billion of gross cash and $2.2 billion of net cash on the balance sheet.

Our net income attributable to the shareholders for the quarter was at INR26.5 billion. Our EPS grew 4.1% year-on-year. Our effective tax rate remained flat for Q2 at 24%. On the forex front, our realized rate for IT services in Q2 was 82.54. Our DSO for the quarter is at 79 days, which is an improvement of three days year-on-year.

To conclude, our guidance for the next quarter from IT services business segment is expected to be in the range of $2.617 billion to $2.672 billion. This translates to a sequential guidance of negative 3.5% to negative 1.5% in constant currency terms.

Thank you and over to you, Amit.

Amit Choudhary — Chief Operating Officer

Thank you, Aparna. Hello, everyone. I will share some updates on our business transformation and how that’s reflecting in our steady margin performance. Our new four global business line model has allowed us to deliver a One Wipro service excellence approach to our clients. It is reflected in our latest customer satisfaction survey with our NPS expanding by 840 basis points. This directly reflects our performance with clients, delivery, program governance, and our capabilities. And this is further strengthening our delivery-led sales. On the delivery excellence side, we have been very focused on consistency, efficiency, and productivity for our clients. Automation and Gen AI is a cornerstone here with the corresponding productivity kicking in both on the delivery and functional sites [Phonetic].

Over the last quarter, on the operational efficiency front, utilization is now up to 84.5%. In fact, utilization has increased by almost 470 basis points in the last four quarters, including utilization of next-gen associates. We have taken several actions here from sustained bench reduction efforts, pyramid optimization, to onshore-offshore rationalization, and rigor around subcontracting costs. Alongside, we are keeping a very close eye on discretionary spends with increased rigor on cost and efficiency management.

Thierry has talked about skill being our biggest currency. On the talent reskilling side, we continue to scale Gen AI talent. Over 180,000 of our employees have taken the first Gen AI course. Focused upskilling initiatives across skill families are in place now, including several account academies. These are collaborative initiatives with our clients, providing a skilling roadmap for our teams to serve them better. I am pleased with the progress we have made so far, and a lot more lies ahead.

Now I’ll turn it back over to Dipak.

Dipak Kumar Bohra — Senior Vice President, Corporate Treasurer and Investor Relations

Yashashree, now we can open up the question-and-answer session.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] We have our first question from the line of Kumar Rakesh from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Kumar Rakesh — BNP Paribas — Analyst

Hi, good evening. Thank you for taking my question. My first question was around the large deals and TCV. So over the last four quarters, you have been consistently reporting 1 billion or more of large deal TCV. Over the last two quarters, your revenue from existing customers have reached almost close to 100%, about 99.6-ish or so number, which was about 95%, 96% last year. Does that imply that a large part of these deals which we are seeing are renewal deals? I understand that you don’t disclose those data, but — and this challenge of high deal when not translating into revenue is not just unique to you, we have seen with other companies as well. But at least their guidance or the commentary do suggest that in the coming quarters, they are going to see a much better growth outlook. Whereas in contrast, your outlook suggests that the growth is going to further deaccelerate from here on? And it’s absolutely in contrast to the deals and TCV, which you are reporting. So is that a reflection that almost the entire part of the large deal TCV which we are seeing here is actually a renewal and not meaningfully new deal TCV?

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

Kumar Rakesh, this is Thierry. This is not the case. I think you are certainly reflecting on the fact that indeed bookings in TCV have been very solid over the last quarter. That is true. What we are seeing is we are winning more large deals. There is a good balance between new and renewals. Renewals can include increased scope in the case of consolidation. So we have different types of those large deals. What’s clear is that while we — and I think you will recognize also what we have said because the market has not dramatically changed versus the previous — last quarter is that while we win large deals, that may take a little bit more time to convert into revenue, there is a lower volume of discretionary spend being clocked, if you like, with our clients. That is the kind of — now type of revenue that we are missing. So that’s, it’s — it is the revenue trend you are seeing is a reflection of those two different realities.

On one side, there is a very decent volume of business in the market. We have a strong pipeline, and we are winning a nice share of these deals. We are winning more large deals than before. Every quarter, we improve. I mean, it’s quite interesting. We’ve moved from never going into large deals to going occasionally a big one to now more systematically, I would say, win large deals. This time to — a close to $0.5 [Phonetic] billion deal for the same quarter is a sign of that. And yet at the same time, discretionary spend is lower. You know that, like everybody in our industry, we have a certain volume of our business that is more discretionary. We might be a little more exposed than some others because of our significant presence in consulting business in particular, and even if we know that it will be the first one to bounce back when the demand is here. But so that’s what we are seeing.

And now the last thing is accept the fact we are guiding for the quarter to come and not beyond that, and that’s probably why that’s how we are guiding to you. But we also believe that should the market remain as it is, we will slowly bounce back.

Kumar Rakesh — BNP Paribas — Analyst

Thanks, Thierry, for that. My second question was around your strategy of exiting from the smaller accounts, and we started seeing the effect of that from last year’s fourth quarter. And since then, the revenue for the IT services has come down by about $90 million. Does it appears to be that proactively pruning small accounts at a time when the demand environment feed [Phonetic] could be counterproductive and actually could be one of the reasons why our growth could be getting impacted?

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

So first of all, Kumar Rakesh, our strategy that we elaborated back in 2020 was to clearly develop large accounts. We were — we had at that time 11 accounts over $100 million, which was clearly lower than most in the industries, companies of similar size. And so we felt that, you cannot invest unilaterally across the board. You have to make choices, and that makes a lot more sense to invest into partnership, relationship with clients that will allow you to drive significant growth. There’s a potential of significant growth, and that’s what we’ve done. It means that instead of, the cost of sell for very small account is higher. It is proven. We know that until a certain point in time, you are spending an abnormal amount of time to close very small deals and not so much more time to close bigger deals. So that’s a conscious decision to focus on less number of accounts, but be meaningful as a partner in these accounts, be their partner in the transformation. And that’s what we’ve done.

So I give you two data points, Kumar Rakesh. One, look at the top accounts, the accounts of over $100 million. We’ve doubled the number of these accounts in two years, right, from 11 to 22, as simple as that. Second thing, if you look at what we call our metal account, which are our top 80 accounts, they’ve actually resisted a lot better than the smaller ones. So I think it’s just a confirmation that this is the right strategy. We need to continue to focus our attention on those accounts where there will be growth over the next quarters, but also accounts that are shaping our industry and reduce the wasted investments in accounts where we will never go beyond a certain point in terms of size.

Kumar Rakesh — BNP Paribas — Analyst

Thanks, Thierry. So the rationale behind the strategy is very well appreciated. My question was more around the timing of that strategy to bring into effect, in full effect. Can that also be contributing pulling down our revenue?

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

So let me address this point also. What have we done in terms of growth strategy over the last three years? The first two years has been a period of significant growth. There was significant growth in this market. We’ve gone all in, okay? And we’ve really got a good share of the growth. If you look at the growth during that time, company has change in scale, right? Over 40% increase in size in 10 quarters. The market has changed. I think you will recognize that with me. The market is different. There’s more macro instability, uncertainty, cautiousness, everything. So this is not a gross market right now. Let’s face it, right? And so I think we recognize that this is not necessarily a market where anybody will shine in terms of growth.

For us, what’s key is to continue our focus on our transformation. Continue to be more relevant. Continue to drive our investment priorities around AI, around cloud, around security. Continue to upgrade our talent. Continue to be more nimble, more efficient. And that’s how you will recognize, that’s how we continue to maintain and actually deliver the level of margins we are at in Q2. And so that’s — we are ready for when the market will bounce back to go back into growth mode.

Kumar Rakesh — BNP Paribas — Analyst

Thanks a lot, Thierry for sharing your thoughts.

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

You’re welcome.

Operator

Thank you. We have a next question from the line of Gaurav Rateria from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Gaurav Rateria — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. So my first question is regarding initiatives taken by us to broaden our funnel to include mega deals which are like $500 million plus kind of a TCV in pipeline and pursue the same. And related question is also around nature of bookings that we have had. Are they more on the cost side or more on transformation side? Have we made any tweaks in strategy to pivot to the changed market conditions when deals are coming more towards a cost optimization side? Thank you.

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

Good question, Gaurav. So I’ll take a shot at those two; Aparna, feel free to jump in, or Amit, if you feel like it. So on the first point, which is the focus on the larger deals, I think it was clear that, you know, back a few years ago, we were not getting and we put our fair share of larger deals. And, you know, large deals are giving you a certain level of resilience and also a certain level of impact with a client. And that is completely in the center of our strategy to develop, as I said before, to develop, you know, strategic relation and meaningful relation with our clients. So to do so, we’ve started to build, you know, with our CGO [Phonetic]. If any, we’ve started to build our larger team, right? It started with, you know, bringing talent, people that have been there are big dealers that have been building, you know, larger teams in the past.

We’ve also obviously refocused our account executives and our leaders to be ready to go for larger deals. It has positioned us to engage at a different level with our clients. Let’s pay more attention to their priorities and challenges and be proactive and bringing back to them, you know, solutions that would address the challenges. And we’ve started to win larger deals. It started with one big one and then another big one, but it was more erratic at the beginning. And then we started to win more of these large deals and larger ones in size. And I think it’s becoming a machine now inside Wipro where, you know, as part of our deals, we have a significant volume of large deals every quarter. And I think, you know, we expect this to continue over the next quarters. So that’s on the large deals.

On the cost actions you ask, Gaurav. If I understood well, your question was, how did you balance focus on tactical —

Aparna C. Iyer — Chief Financial Officer

He wants to understand whether the pipeline, the deals that you’re winning, are they —

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

Ah, okay. Sorry. So, okay. So, yes, that is, I would say, Gaurav, on the pipeline, I would say, there is certainly an evolution of the type of deals that we are seeing, and the attention to cost takeout, cost optimization, margin productivity, and so on, is certainly a lot bigger than it was some quarters ago. There is no doubt.

Gaurav Rateria — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We have a next question from the line of Dipesh Mehta from Emkay. Please go ahead.

Dipesh Mehta — Emkay Global Financial Services — Analyst

Thanks for the opportunity. Couple of questions. First about sales and marketing increase. This quarter it is showing some spike percentage of revenue. There is a good uptick Q-o-Q, Y-o-Y. If you can help us understand what drives the significant of excess in sales and marketing. Related question is, if I look number of new clients which we had every quarter, it is showing moderation for last few quarters. So these two numbers are not matching with the directionally. If you can provide some sense.

Second question is about, if I look reconciliation item. Earlier we indicated talent pool correction is driving that item. Now this quarter again, it is increased. So 2.2 billion loss in the line item. How would — should understand this line item? And how would you expect it to trend in coming quarter? Thank you.

Aparna C. Iyer — Chief Financial Officer

So Dipesh, to your point on sales and marketing expenses being high, it’s specifically in reference to one of the line items on depreciation amortization where we have taken an accelerated amortization pertaining to one of our customer intangibles. And that is why it’s a one-off and it should normalize over a period of time. The second piece that you said on the number of accounts being moderated, you know, Thierry, just answered that it is a part of the strategy. We are focusing on increasing and expanding our top client relationships and you know, it is in line with what we are pursuing as a strategy overall.

To your third question that you had asked on the reconciling items, last quarter that is in Q1 of this fiscal, we had announced that in owing to a turn in the macroeconomic environment and for us in line with all the transformation that we are pursuing, we wanted to be more agile and we had announced a restructuring program under which we had taken in restructuring expenses both in Q1 and we’d indicated that there would be a spillover into Q2, which is being now booked in the reconciling items. This is towards the employee severance costs and it’s one-off in nature and that is how you should model it.

Dipesh Mehta — Emkay Global Financial Services — Analyst

So is it now over from Q3 onwards, this line item will not be there or you expect it to recur?

Aparna C. Iyer — Chief Financial Officer

So we’re not calling out for any particular guidance on this. We had said that it was one-off in nature. We will need to take into account what is shifting and what’s changing in our business. If there is more update, we will share it with you in the next quarter.

Dipesh Mehta — Emkay Global Financial Services — Analyst

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. We have a next question from the line of Abhishek Kumar from JM Financial. Please go ahead.

Abhishek Kumar — JM Financial — Analyst

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. Thierry, you mentioned that you expect, you know, in the next couple of quarters, things to look up. I was just wondering what is driving your confidence? Are we seeing that the runoff of discretionary projects that we have witnessed over the last couple of quarters, is that coming to an end or you expect, you know, general demand to improve going forward?

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

Abhishek, thanks for your question. I’ll try to address it, staying within our policy in terms of guidance. So, you know, one is certainly the guidance for Q3 includes a certain volume of furloughs, let’s be clear, bigger than it was, you know, the previous year, right? It’s a fact, which we don’t necessarily expect to repeat for sure.

Second is, you know, the fact that quarter after quarter, with our level of TCV, we continue to build a backlog of deals. So there’s a bigger proportion of our revenue that gets covered by contract, if you like, for the quarters to come. So, you know, we are staying certainly cautious and as you know, we are not guiding beyond this quarter, but, you know, it feels that, you know, we can reasonably expect a rebound to come after.

Abhishek Kumar — JM Financial — Analyst

Sure. That’s helpful. Just one follow up, maybe. So on order backlog, you mentioned, so while, you know, we are winning deals, so inflow is good, at the same time, you know, there is a depletion of current local business. So, I mean, I know we don’t get that number, but any color in terms of how the order backlog has improved, you know, over the past few quarters, given that these, given these two, you know, movement in different direction. Thanks.

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

Well, you know, Abhishek, one, the type of deals, you know, includes a bigger proportion of larger deals than before, okay, which, you know, will trigger a bigger stickiness in these accounts going forward, no doubt. Second, the very nature of those larger deals tend to be more strategic. Third, the type of deals. You know, looking at our portfolio, we’ve done a lot of work over the last quarters to, you know, continue the rotation of our portfolio, more technology-based, you know, around data, around security, around cloud, and this is what’s happened in engineering, and this is what’s happening.

So I would say the nature of these deals has certainly continued to evolve. You know, there’s a greater attention to, you know, cost rationalization, therefore, you know, producing business case, delivering outcomes, you know, those are typically what we are seeing in the deals that we are closing. And, you know, I would say also we are seeing, you know, a good volume of deals of clients working on the consolidation of their providers, where we are seeing opportunities to expand our position in these accounts.

Operator

Mr. Abhishek Kumar?

Abhishek Kumar — JM Financial — Analyst

Yeah, thank you.

Operator

Does that answer your question?

Abhishek Kumar — JM Financial — Analyst

Yes, it does.

Operator

Thank you. We have a next question from the line of Girish Pai from Nirmal Bang Equities. Please go ahead.

Girish Pai — Nirmal Bang Equities — Analyst

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Thierry, how would you characterize the mood of clients? Would you say they see more optimistic or pessimistic today compared to, say, when you interacted with them three months back or six months back? That’s question number one.

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

If I understood well, Girish, you ask me to characterize the mood of the market, of the clients.

Girish Pai — Nirmal Bang Equities — Analyst

Mood of the clients, mood of clients, right.

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

So, you know, it’s an interesting question, Girish. I’m spending, you know, every day I speak to clients, right? So, for sure, I try to, you know, gauge their mood and, you know, their priorities and so on. What do I see? First of all, technology is center to a lot of their priorities. They are very mature about technology. They have a lot of ambition about how technology will transform their business. They’re very curious about how AI and Gen AI is, you know, either impacting or transforming or helping them be more efficient in their industry. And a lot of those discussions are around that. There is a certain level of cautiousness to engage new program. There is a certain level of cautiousness to, you know, to spend as much as what they used to spend in the previous quarter or in the previous years.

So, they are like you and I. They are reading, you know, newspapers every day. They see the news, you know, on the American economy, European economy, the wars here and there. And the fact that, you know, all of this is creating a certain level of instability and anxiety. A lot of people are starting to project themselves and say, okay, it’s going to be time to resume some of those programs because the business will, you know, obviously suffer from less attention to technology. So, that’s, you know, the mood, I would say, is in a way cautious and anxious, but at the same time very aware of the fact that, you know, it’s going to be time to resume those investments sooner than later. Over to you.

Girish Pai — Nirmal Bang Equities — Analyst

Yeah. Regarding your remarks on, in your prepared remarks you made a lot of comments on Generative AI. In your operations, to what extent are you using Generative AI today? And where are you on that journey? And where do you think you’ll be like 12 months down the road? And what are the kind of productivity gains you pick [Phonetic]? And connected with that, are the clients you mentioned that a lot of the conversations around Generative AI, are they actually asking for —

Operator

Mr. Pai, I’m sorry, you’re not audible.

Girish Pai — Nirmal Bang Equities — Analyst

Yeah, this is regarding Generative AI. Can you hear me now?

Operator

It is not very clear.

Girish Pai — Nirmal Bang Equities — Analyst

Okay. Can you move to the next question? Thanks.

Operator

Thank you.

Subha Tatavarti — Chief Technology Officer

Girish, I can — this is Subha Tatavarti, I’m the CTO. We heard parts of your question and I want to kind of address some parts of it. One was around what is our strategy? We believe that Generative AI will fundamentally change many businesses and also the way we live. So we have been very, very aggressive. And in the last six months, we have adopted Generative AI to streamline our technology business processes as well as people. Early signs, and this is very, very early, but early signs are indicative of productivity gains, and in many areas. We talked a little bit about in the HR space, specifically around background checks. A lot of work we do is around employee hiring, retention, training, and managing. So a lot of our work is now being streamlined, at least in early parts of our work with Generative AI in this space are very positive and encouraging in terms of productivity gains.

Similarly, on the quality assurance and testing practice. This has been quite interesting because in the last two months to three months, the kind of pilots we’ve run are indicative that we can significantly reduce the amount of time or the number of hours it would take for us to be able to, say, perform functional testing or perform specifically around data generation environment setup. So the early tests and early pilots are very encouraging. And we hope to continue to give you updates on this and the rollout, as well as how we’ll take our learnings from internal adoption to our customers shortly.

Operator

Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Sandeep Shah from Equirus Securities. Please go ahead.

Sandeep Shah — Equirus Securities — Analyst

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the opportunity. If I just look at the third quarter guidance and look at the first nine months of this financial year, it’s likely to be a 4% decline on a Y-o-Y basis in a constant currency terms, which would be one of the lowest in the industry, and this would be a second period in a row where our growth on an organic basis would be actually lower than the industry. So Thierry, my question is, do we need to introspect our growth strategy, our offerings? Do you believe is there any gap in the offerings, or is it we have to actually check and introspect our go-to-market model? Because deal wins are one indicator which everybody is winning, but our growth rates have been lagging quarter after quarter and period after period starting from FY ’22 on an organic basis.

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

So Sandeep, we are very clear at Wipro on the way we are, we want to progress. We have our own journey. We are to define our own strategy. And we have our own ambition and our own focus. Over the quarters, there have been quarters where we have grown a little more, some of them we’ve grown less, and that’s a reality. What matters is to look at the progression over the certain period of time and look at what we have done over the last years. And I think you will have a response in terms of our growth strategy. The growth that this organization, this leadership team, has been able to drive over the last three years is actually a pretty decent level of growth.

We always want more growth, trust me, Sandeep. But at the same time, we are focusing on our transformation as much as we are focusing on the day-to-day performance. And that’s incredibly important. You need to reflect and understand that. The way we have redefined our ambition, the way we have invested in our organization, in talent, in capabilities, in solutions, the way we have invested in our systems, the way we have invested in consulting capabilities to reposition ourselves in our operating model, in our own efficiency, all of that is to be taken into account and you cannot take only one element of the performance in isolation of the rest. That’s how we are looking at our progression. We are happy with where we are for sure. We’re always trying to do more and we are always ambitious to do more, but we are looking ahead of us, quite confident at our opportunity to get back into growth as the market get a little better, frankly.

Sandeep Shah — Equirus Securities — Analyst

Okay. And just a related question, when you expect a pickup in the growth and rebound in the growth, is it fair to assume that fourth quarter onward, the guidance may not indicate any kind of a Q-on-Q dip? Are you indicating a rebound from 4Q or maybe 1Q of next financial year?

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

No, Sandeep, no, no, you will not get anything more from me. You know, we are not guiding beyond the current quarter.

Sandeep Shah — Equirus Securities — Analyst

Okay. Okay. And a question to CFO, Aparna, just in terms of margins, in fact, wage hikes are effective from 1st of December and Q3 looks like from the guidance is likely to be a soft quarter. So in that scenario, still a flattish or a narrow band movement on the margin is still feasible or there could be some seasonal impact on the margin because of the slower growth and the wage hikes effective December?

Aparna C. Iyer — Chief Financial Officer

Hi, Sandeep. You know, yes, you’ve already highlighted the headwinds that we are starting quarter three with. There will be pressure on margins. We’ve done very well on, you know, being remaining resilient in the first half. The efficiency measures have only intensified. You know, it will be a challenging task and, you know, that’s why we’ve said that, you know, our endeavor will be to be range bound in terms of what we’ve delivered over the last few quarters. But I agree with you that there are more headwinds as we start the quarter.

Sandeep Shah — Equirus Securities — Analyst

Okay. Thanks, thanks. Thanks for my turn and congratulations, Aparna.

Aparna C. Iyer — Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Ravi Menon from Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Ravi Menon — Macquarie Group — Analyst

Hi, thank you. Thierry, you mentioned about, you know, your win rates in the last years in Europe being 100%. Could you comment a bit on how that’s changed in the US over the last few years?

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

So, you specifically to Europe, Ravi, correct?

Ravi Menon — Macquarie Group — Analyst

Specifically the US, Thierry.

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

Oh, US. Ah, okay, sorry. So I would say, well, you know, we do not have a 100% score in your US. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad score. I think we’ve done very well in the US as well. We just highlighted the 100% score in Europe because it was quite a — we consider that, you know, this is quite a performance. But, you know, the performance, the win rate is actually improving and strong in the US like it is in Europe or actually in Asia-Pac. Ravi?

Ravi Menon — Macquarie Group — Analyst

So overall, you would say that you’ve seen win rates improve and, you know, your pipeline as well, and that’s actually, that’s why we’re seeing the deal TCV right, overall step-up [Phonetic].

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

Yeah, sorry. Sorry. I thought you were done. What we are seeing is that we are getting better at qualifying the deals that we see in the pipeline to reduce the lost investments, if you like. And so it is definitely delivering results. You know, there’s no doubt that, you know, when we’ve, you know, gone through the qualification process and feel that, you know, this is a deal that, you know, we can win, then the entire mobilization of the team is here to drive it till the finish line.

Ravi Menon — Macquarie Group — Analyst

Thank you. One last follow-up on Europe. You know, we saw a surprising decline here. Did any specific industry or country that was responsible largely for this?

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

Yeah, you’re right. It is a surprising decline for Europe, I can imagine, for you, given the way we held pretty strongly the previous quarters. I think, you know, I’m looking at Aparna, just, but to me, this is primarily financial services, right, financial services primarily, and manufacturing, correct. And manufacturing. So two sectors. No, I mean, we haven’t lost any account or it’s not like, you know, we’ve had a drama, but certainly some significant slowdown, noticed in some of our large accounting in financial services and manufacturing in Europe.

Having said that, that’s what, Ravi, if I can just add one element. Pipeline continues to be strong in Europe. You know, the leadership team in Europe is pretty bullish. So it gives confidence that, you know, Europe will bounce back rapidly.

Ravi Menon — Macquarie Group — Analyst

Thanks a lot, Thierry. I’ll just add [Phonetic] to your time, that’s why I kept interrupting. Thanks. Best of luck.

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

You’re welcome. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. We have our next question from the line of Apurva Prasad from HDFC Securities. Please go ahead.

Apurva Prasad — HDFC Securities — Analyst

Thanks for taking my question. Thierry, would be interesting to know your thoughts on BFSI vertical in terms of how do you see the impact of potential Basel III endgame proposals, you know, on US banks and the resultant impact on tech spend. And a related piece could be on some large banking customers who are carrying out the org structure change in terms of delayering their personnel. So do you see this as an opportunity for incumbents such as Wipro, or should that be more continued pressure?

Thierry Delaporte — Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

Apurva, your questions are specific to the financial services sector. I think, you know, certainly financial services sector has been slower, significantly slower this year. I think we are seeing it across the board. It actually started in America, then it moved to Europe. We are seeing places in particular, you know, type of Tier 2, maybe banks in America where the growth is coming back. So I would say these are definitely places in the banks where, you know, when I was referring earlier discussions I’ve had with clients telling me, you know, we have a lot of programs that are, you know, in the waiting room ready to be launched and start. Certainly, you know, in the banks it’s a reality. Banks are definitely focusing on, you know, cost takeout and productivity exercise. There’s a lot of consolidation activities going on, which is, you know, we see it as an opportunity for us, no doubt, absolutely no doubt. So, you know, that’s what we are doing.

Apurva Prasad — HDFC Securities — Analyst

Thanks for the follow on that. Thierry, just one more question.

Operator

Mr. Prasad, I request you to join back the queue, please.

Apurva Prasad — HDFC Securities — Analyst

Okay.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference back to Mr. Dipak Bohra for closing comments. Over to you, sir.

Dipak Kumar Bohra — Senior Vice President, Corporate Treasurer and Investor Relations

Thank you all for joining the call. In case we could not take any questions due to time constraint, please feel free to reach out to Investor Relations team. Have a nice evening. Thank you so much.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]