HCL Technologies Limited Q3 FY23 Earnings Conference Call Insights

Key highlights from HCL Technologies Limited (HCLTECH) Q3 FY23 Earnings Concall

Management Update:

• [00:08:11] HCLTECH said that its top three deals won in 3Q23, gave the company a TCV of about $1 billion in the quarter.

• [00:11:08] The company said it’s starting to see moderating attrition and talent cost across the globe unlike last year.

Q&A Highlights:

• [00:20:06] Ravi Menon from Macquarie asked if the software product growth will be stable to growing going forward unlike the 3Q seasonality. C. Vijaya Kumar CEO answered that the expectation is that the trajectory will continue. However, HCL will be cautious before calling out a trend.

• [00:24:36] Ravi Menon of Macquarie enquired if margins for IT services could get back to pre-COVID levels with attrition now starting to come off. Prateek Aggarwal CFO replied that it is the intent to get back to per-COVID level of 19-20% and HCL is working towards that.

• [00:26:27] Gaurav Rateria with Morgan Stanley asked about the driver of top 10-20 account’s contribution as a percentage of revenue declining. C. Vijaya Kumar CEO answered that it’s due to some of the revenue getting accounted under IBM that was coming through the transfer of contracts that has now come into HCL’s books. And second reason is forex.

• [00:27:41] Gaurav Rateria from Morgan Stanley asked about HCL’s portfolio growth towards Europe. C. Vijaya Kumar CEO said the pipeline in Europe is very good, some deal delays are expected to convert in 4Q23 or 1Q24. There might be a little softness in the interim.

• [00:30:06] Gaurav Rateria from Morgan Stanley queried about the visibility for March quarter bookings. C. Vijaya Kumar CEO said that on a YonY basis HCL is up 13% from TCV perspective. HCL is hoping to maintain that, but said it’s difficult to commit to a number.

• [00:38:24] Sandeep Shah from Equirus Securities asked that in the deal TCV, if there is any major change in terms of proportion of deal wins that are cost takeout deals vs. discretionary deals. C. Vijaya Kumar CEO replied that none of the 3 large deals in 3Q are driven by cost takeout.

• [00:40:29] Sandeep Shah of Equirus Securities enquired if HCL is seeing any slowness in terms of cloud adoption or digital adoption for clients entering into CY23. C. Vijaya Kumar CEO said HCL is seeing it accelerating and there is urgency to drive this adoption.

• [00:46:39] Girish Pai from Nirmal Bang asked about the slowing number of ACV business growth. C. Vijaya Kumar CEO said that large deals are longer tenure, which has a skew. On a YTD basis ACV growth is 13% on a YTD basis, which is a strong quarter. In 3Q, slowing might be due to different kind of mix of deals.

• [00:49:33] Abhishek Kumar with JM Financial asked about the company’s view on ER&D services over the next few quarters. Vijay Guntur President answered that some of the decisions on product lines discontinuing are impacting it. But it’s only in the tech space HCL is seeing a little more, while in the assets heavy business, this trend is not seen.

• [00:50:51] Abhishek Kumar with JM Financial enquired what percentage of ER&D roughly will be technology.  Vijay Guntur President replied that it will be a little over 11%.

• [00:51:28] Komal Ladha from YellowJersey asked if the company is facing any major challenges with employee cost as startups are hiring at higher packages. C. Vijaya Kumar CEO clarified that that was an issue two quarters ago, but this quarter HCL is seeing a bit moderation in the talent  cost and attrition.

• [00:52:01] Komal Ladha from YellowJersey enquired what kind of fresher hirings the company is looking at in coming quarters. Ramachandran S CHRO said the company will be getting close to the fresher numbers planned for FY23.

• [00:52:57] Kshitij Saraf from Tusk Investments asked about the ACV for software wins; the size of deals, tenure etc. C. Vijaya Kumar CEO replied that HCL doesn’t give deal specific numbers. Usually the software ticket sizes are small from $100,000 to $10 million.