Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Accenture plc (NYSE:ACN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript March 23, 2023

Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Accenture’s Second Quarter Fiscal 2023 Earnings Call. As a reminder, today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Katie O’Conor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Katie O’Conor: Thank you, operator and thanks everyone for joining us today on our second quarter fiscal 2023 earnings announcement. As the operator just mentioned, I am Katie O’Conor, Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations. On today’s call, you will hear from Julie Sweet, our Chair and Chief Executive Officer; and KC McClure, our Chief Financial Officer. We hope you have had an opportunity to review the news release we issued a short time ago. Let me quickly outline the agenda for today’s call. Julie will begin with an overview of our results. KC will take you through the financial details, including the income statement and balance sheet, along with some key operational metrics for the second quarter. Julie will then provide a brief update on our market positioning before KC provides our business outlook for the third quarter and full fiscal year 2023.

We will then take your questions before Julie provides a wrap-up at the end of the call. Some of the matters we will discuss on this call, including our business outlook, are forward-looking and as such, are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, those factors set forth in today’s news release and discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in this call. During our call today, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information for investors. We include reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures, where appropriate, to GAAP in our news release or in the Investor Relations section of our website at accenture.com.

As always, Accenture assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. Now, let me turn the call over to Julie.

Julie Sweet: Thank you, Katie and thank you to everyone joining today and thank you to our 738,000 people around the globe for your incredible work and commitment to our clients, which has resulted in our delivering another strong quarter of financial results and the broader 360-degree value we continue to create for all our stakeholders. Let me share a few highlights and value we created in our continued disciplined execution. I am very pleased with our record bookings for Q2 at $22.1 billion, our highest ever including 35 clients with quarterly bookings greater than $100 million, our second highest quarter on record for such bookings, representing the continued trust that our clients have in us. We delivered revenues of $15.8 billion, representing 9% growth in local currency, bringing us to $31.6 billion of revenue at 12% growth through H1 and we continued gaining market share, growing approximately 2x the market.

We continued our inorganic investments with six acquisitions in strategic areas, including cloud with the acquisition of SKS in Europe, which will expand our specialized technology, consulting and regulatory capabilities, enabling us to better serve our financial services clients; security with the acquisition of Morphus in Brazil, a cyber defense risk management, cyber threat intelligence service provider; and supply chain with the acquisition of Inspirage in the U.S., which will enhance our technology capabilities to accelerate innovation for clients through emerging technologies such as touchless supply chain and digital twins. We also continued our investment in our people with 10.3 million training hours, a 12% increase year-over-year.

We are optimizing our business to lower costs in fiscal year 2024 and beyond, while continuing to invest in our business and our people to capture the significant growth opportunities ahead. KC will be giving you more detail on these actions. Finally, we believe our focus on creating 360-degree value differentiates us in our market. We earned the number one position in our industry for the 10th year in a row and number 32 overall on Fortune’s list of the World’s Most Admired Companies. We ranked number one in our industry and number four overall on the JUST Capital list of America’s Most JUST Companies. And we have been recognized by Ethisphere as one of the world’s most ethical companies for the 16th year in a row. I am very pleased that our results demonstrate once again that our strategy to be the execution partner of choice for transformation, lead in the five forces and have a diverse business across markets, industries and services continues to allow us to lead and take market share.

And in a world in which all strategies lead to technology, we have distinguished ourselves and our impact in the market. Over to you, KC.

KC McClure: Thank you, Julie and thanks to all of you for taking the time to join us on today’s call. We were pleased with our overall results in the second quarter, setting a new bookings record at $22.1 billion, $2.5 billion higher than our previous record set in Q2 of last year, with consulting bookings close to matching our previous record. We delivered revenue growth for the quarter at the top end of our guided range as we continue to deliver on our shareholder value propositions. Before I summarize results for the quarter, let me spend a moment on the business optimization actions we are taking to reduce costs for fiscal €˜24 and beyond, which includes streamlining operations, transforming our non-billable corporate functions and consolidating office space.

We estimate cost of $1.5 billion through fiscal year 2024, of which we expect to incur approximately $800 million in FY €˜23 and $700 million in FY €˜24, comprised of approximately $1.2 billion in severance and $300 million for the consolidation of office space. These actions are expected to impact roughly 2.5% or 19,000 of our current workforce, of which over half are non-billable corporate functions and include over 800 of our more than 10,000 leaders across our markets and services. Nearly half of the 19,000 people will depart by the end of fiscal year €˜23. Now, let me summarize a few of the highlights for the quarter. Revenues grew 9% local currency, driven by broad-based growth across all markets with more than half of our 13 industries growing double-digits.

We also continue to extend our leadership position with growth estimated to be about 2x the market, which refers to our basket of publicly traded companies. In Q2, we recorded $244 million in cost associated with the business optimization actions, which impacted operating margin by 150 basis points and EPS by $0.30. The following comparisons exclude these impacts and reflect adjusted results. We delivered adjusted EPS in the quarter of $2.69, reflecting 6% growth over EPS last year. Adjusted operating margin of 13.8% increased 10 basis points, with 20 basis points expansion year-to-date and includes continued significant investments in our people and our business. Finally, we delivered free cash flow of $2.2 billion and returned $1.8 billion to shareholders through repurchases and dividends.

Year-to-date, we have invested $1.1 billion in acquisitions, primarily attributed to 15 transactions. With those high level comments, let me turn to some of the details, starting with new bookings. New bookings were a record at $22.1 billion for the quarter, representing growth of 17% in local currency with an overall book-to-bill of 1.4. Consulting bookings were $10.7 billion with a book-to-bill of 1.3. Managed service bookings were also a record at $11.4 billion with a book-to-bill of 1.5. We were very pleased with the strength of our new bookings, which were broad-based, delivering a very strong book-to-bill across all of our geographic markets and across our services with a book-to-bill of 1.5 in operations, 1.4 in technology and 1.3 in strategy and consulting.

Antonio Guillem/Shutterstock.com

Turning now to revenues. Revenues for the quarter were $15.8 billion, a 5% increase in U.S. dollars and 9% in local currency and we are at the top end of our range, adjusting for a foreign exchange headwind of approximately 4% compared to the 5% provided last quarter. Consulting revenues for the quarter were $8.3 billion, a decline of 1% in U.S. dollars and an increase of 4% in local currency. Managed services revenue were $7.5 billion, up 12% in U.S. dollars and 16% in local currency. Taking a closer look at our service dimensions, technology services and operations grew double-digits and strategy and consulting declined mid single-digits. Turning to our geographic markets. In North America, revenue growth was 5% in local currency, driven by growth in public service, health and utilities.

These increases were partially offset by a decline in communications and media and high tech. Revenue growth was driven by the United States. In Europe, revenues grew 12% in local currency, led by growth in industrial, banking and capital markets and public service. Revenue growth was driven by Germany, Italy and France. In Growth Markets, we delivered 14% revenue growth in local currency, driven by growth in banking and capital markets, chemical and natural resources and public service. Revenue growth was led by Japan. Moving down the income statement. Gross margin for the quarter was 30.6% compared with 30.1% for the same period last year. Sales and marketing expense for the quarter was 9.9% compared to 9.4% for the second quarter last year.

General and administrative expense was 6.8% compared to 7% for the same quarter last year. Adjusted operating income was $2.2 billion in the second quarter, reflecting an adjusted 13.8% operating margin, an increase of 10 basis points from operating margin in the second quarter of last year. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 20.4% compared with an effective tax rate of 19.2% for the second quarter last year. Adjusted diluted earnings per share were $2.69 compared with diluted EPS of $2.54 in the second quarter last year. Days service outstanding were 42 days compared to 48 days last quarter and 41 days in the second quarter of last year. Free cash flow for the quarter was $2.2 billion compared to approximately $400 million last quarter, resulting from cash generated by operating activities of $2.3 billion, net of property and equipment additions of $108 million.

Our cash balance of €“ at February 28 was $6.2 billion compared with $7.9 billion at August 31. With regards to our ongoing objective to return cash to shareholders, in the second quarter, we repurchased or redeemed 4.1 million shares for $1.1 billion at an average price of $273.55 per share. As of February 28, we had approximately $4.2 billion of share repurchase authority remaining. Also in February, we paid a quarterly cash dividend of $1.12 per share for a total of $708 million. This represents a 15% increase over last year. And our Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $1.12 per share to be paid on May 15, a 15% increase over last year. Finally, turning to the 360-degree value we are creating for all our stakeholders, we are partnering with Save the Children to connect with new audiences and invigorate donors through fundraising and creative campaign excellence.

So at the halfway point of fiscal €˜23, we are pleased with our results. Now, let me turn it back to Julie.

Julie Sweet: Thank you, KC. I will start with the overall demand environment, which is more of the same. We believe that the ongoing volatility and uncertainty in the macro environment is making it even clearer to clients that they need to change more, not less. And that two of the five key forces of change that we have identified for the next decade, the need for total enterprise reinvention and the ability to access, create and unlock the potential of talent are critical to succeed in the near, medium and long-term. We see two common themes. First, all strategies continue to lead to technology, particularly cloud, data, AI and security. This is reflected in the latest market estimates, which are down slightly, but are still hovering around 5%.

And second, companies remain focused on executing compressed transformations to achieve lower cost, stronger growth, more agility and greater resilience faster. We remain laser focused on pivoting to our clients’ changing needs and being relevant across the enterprise from the frontline to core operations to corporate functions. Our ability to advise, shape and deliver value-led transformations, leveraging the breadth of our services from strategy and consulting to our strategic managed services across all industries and geographic markets is what differentiates Accenture. Now, I will give you more color on the quarter and in particular, how total enterprise reinvention and talent are critical to our clients. For example, we are helping Shionogi & Co. Limited, a Japanese pharmaceutical company with a compressed transformation to improve its business process efficiency and create a more agile organization.

We will enter into a joint venture with the company that will provide managed services capability to oversee back office functions such as human resources, finance and accounting, public relations, facility management, procurement and marketing. The joint venture will also be charged with the management of the pharmacovigilance function from safety management operations to post-marketing operations to regulatory compliance. As part of this transformation, we will upscale over 400 employees, enabling them to play a greater role in the growth and development of the wider business, hence demonstrating the value of all our services from strategy and consulting, our deep industry knowledge to technology and operations coming together to enable the clients transformation.

I would like to take a moment to recognize Egawa-san, our Head of the Japan market unit and our extraordinary people in Japan for how they are consistently creating value for our clients with double-digit revenue growth for each of the past 5 years. As clients focus on building their digital core with a modern cloud-based infrastructure, our cloud business continues to grow very strong double-digits. For example, we are working with the state of Missouri to replace its legacy applications and infrastructure with a modern ERP in the cloud, introducing new capabilities in finance, supply chain management, human capital management, payroll and budgeting. As the current ERP system no longer fully meets the business needs of the state, they are looking for a modern system that is efficient, scalable and flexible, all delivered by a best-in-class implementation partner.

This compressed transformation, one of the earliest and most complex ERP implementations for any state will help reduce operating expenses, provide opportunities for upskilling and improve customer experience and services. We are partnering with minority and women-owned businesses on this transformation and we will bring in apprentices, the program’s lifecycle part of our shared commitment with the state of Missouri to foster diversity and inclusion. With our cloud-first strategy, our approach has been to help clients migrate to the cloud and then partner with them on their journey to grow and innovate in the cloud. Our cloud growth is driven by both migration and clients who are moving forward on this journey, such as Enel, one of our largest utilities clients who has taken their mass migration to cloud a few years ago to the next level, changing their operating model, tools and talent and largely automating IT operations.

We are now helping them accelerate the modernization of their application landscape, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80%, support a significant acquisition and divestment agenda and pivot to platform-based business model for integrated retail delivery beyond meter services, grid and renewable energy. Using cloud as their operating systems is helping this market leader manage increasing levels of complexity by bringing together data, AI and applications to optimize their operations and accelerate growth. A strong and secure digital core also is essential to total enterprise reinvention. We are seeing continued very strong demand for our security services, which experienced another quarter of very strong double-digit growth. We are working with Empresas CMPC SA, a Chilean pulp and paper company and a cybersecurity transformation of their plant operations.

We will implement a security program across its 48 industrial sites focused on threat detection, management and response as well as governance and workforce training. Through our global and local Industry X capabilities, we will help strengthen the company’s cybersecurity expenses through continuous monitoring of its physical locations and equipment. We continue to lead in managed services, which experienced strong growth again this quarter at 16%. Managed services are strategic for our clients, because they enable clients to move faster, leveraging our digital platform expertise and talent as well as delivering cost efficiencies. And our clients are turning to Accenture because of the depth and breadth of our industry, functional and technology expertise that we bring together into the transformation journey.

Our approach to managed services is to both run and transform and run and modernize. We deliver cost savings as table stakes. For example, we are partnering with the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions, which is responsible for welfare pensions and child maintenance policy to modernize its legacy systems, eliminating backlogs and delivering a better experience for citizens and employees. We developed a cloud-based intelligent optimization platform that combines robotic process automation, AI, analytics and machine learning to provide bots as a service to create the equivalent of a virtual workforce available 24/7. With routine tests now automated, the organization has already saved 2.4 million human hours, which can be reallocated to more complex higher value tasks.

Let me pause to thank our global H&PS colleagues for their amazing contributions as evidenced by 14 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth. As our clients continue to prioritize cost optimization as well as growth in Vigilance, Song is more relevant than ever. In Song, which grew strong double-digits this quarter, clients are focused on more capital efficient growth that creates efficiency, drive short-term growth and optimizes existing assets with clear outcomes and shorter time horizons to keep up with the pace of change with customers and technology. We have moved quickly to help clients seize new opportunities in contact centers, not only for enhanced customer service, but also customer acquisition and growth. We are working with a global biopharmaceutical leader in North America to reinvent digital marketing at scale.

Driven by data and using technologies integrated with SynOps, the company will be able to create, produce and deliver consistent world class content that informs and educates healthcare providers and patient communities around the world, helping to deliver innovative health services. We are working with the Prada Group, the Italian luxury fashion player, to offer its customers an entirely new customization experience through an online 3D configurator. Accenture Song created a digital twin of Prada’s iconic show called America’s Cup, which allows shoppers to fully customize it from material to color to trim across the overlay, lining, sole and other parts. With more than 50 million possible configurations, more than any web platform could handle, this innovative approach allows customers to see high resolution 3D models of their custom builds with the same quality and fidelity as a physical shoe.

Song solution to online product customization is fully scalable to the cloud. It gives Prada the flexibility to apply the same strategy to other products, ensuring the outstanding experience that their shoppers expect. As I continue to move across the enterprise, industries and markets, I want to also highlight Industry X, which grew very strong double digits again this quarter, and which we believe is the next digital frontier where our digital engineering capabilities are advancing sustainability services. For example, we are working with Recharge Industries, a battery research and production company in Australia, to help design and engineer one of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery facilities. Once built, the facility will generate up to 30-gigawatt hours of storage capacity per year.

Finally, moving to the metaverse and the ongoing tech revolution. We’ve talked about the importance of artificial intelligence in building the digital core for our clients. While generative AI has recently burst into the popular imagination, at Accenture, we’ve been working with the technology from its earliest stages and are already applying it at clients. For example, we’re working with a multinational bank to transform how it manages high volumes of post-trade processing e-mails every day. We are leveraging a generative AI solution as it is built to understand the context of e-mails with high accuracy. It automatically routes large numbers of e-mails, daily to relevant teams and draft responses with recommended actions and related information.

Our work will help reduce manual effort and risk, boost worker efficiency and improve interactions with customers. And finally, on that note, we will release our Tech Vision 2023 on March 30. The 4th and 5th key forces of change we have identified for the next decade at a metaverse and ongoing tech revolution. And this year’s tech vision is particularly relevant and actionable as our clients face a rapidly changing landscape in which generative AI, metaverse cloud, science, tech and other technologies are driving more opportunities for change and reinvention. This year’s vision will explore how these technologies and more are blending the physical world and the virtual world into a shared reality, creating a huge opportunity for our clients and for Accenture.

Now turning to our business outlook. For the third quarter of fiscal €˜23, we expect revenues to be in the range of $16.1 billion to $16.7 billion. This assumes the impact of FX will be about negative 3.5% compared to the third quarter of fiscal €˜22 and reflects an estimated 3% to 7% growth in local currency. For the full fiscal year €˜23, based upon how the rates have been trending over the last few weeks, we now expect the impact of FX on our results in U.S. dollars will be approximately negative 4.5% compared to fiscal €˜22. For the full fiscal €˜23, we now expect our revenue to be in the range of 8% to 10% growth in local currency over fiscal €˜22, which assumes an inorganic contribution of 2%. We expect business optimization actions to impact fiscal €˜23 GAAP operating margin by 120 basis points and EPS by $0.96.

We expect our anticipated gain on our investment in Duck Creek Technologies to impact EPS by $0.39. Our guidance for full year fiscal €˜23 excludes these impacts. For adjusted operating margin, we expect fiscal year €˜23 to be 15.3% to 15.5%, a 10 to 30 basis point expansion over fiscal €˜22 results. We expect our adjusted annual effective tax rate to be in the range of 23% to 25%. This compares to an effective tax rate of 24% in fiscal €˜22. We expect our full year adjusted earnings per share for fiscal €˜23 to be in the range of $11.41 to $11.63, or 7% to 9% growth over fiscal €˜22 results. For the full fiscal €˜23, we now expect operating cash flow to be in the range of $8.7 billion to $9.2 billion, property and equipment additions to be approximately $700 million and free cash flow to be in the range of $8 billion to $8.5 billion, $300 million higher than our previous guidance.

Our free cash flow guidance continues to reflect a very strong free cash flow to net income ratio of 1.1. Finally, we continue to expect to return at least $7.1 billion through dividends and share repurchases as we remain committed to returning a substantial portion of cash to our shareholders. With that, let’s open it up so we can take your questions. Katie?

Katie O’Conor: Thanks, KC. Operator, would you please provide instructions for those on the call?

See also 21 Biggest Airports in the World and 10 Stocks with Biggest Buybacks.

Q&A Session

Operator: Our first question comes from the line of Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Tien-Tsin Huang: Hi, thanks so much. I had to ask, given the great bookings here, your confidence in being able to replenish those bookings as we look to the third quarter and ahead? I’m sure a lot of people are thinking what’s going on in the month of February and March as well. I know your guidance some reacceleration in the fourth quarter, but just curious about your ability to replenish on the bookings side? Thanks.

KC McClure: Yes. Thanks, Tien-Tsin. So we do feel good about our pipeline even after our record bookings this quarter. And our sales outlook for the next quarter, Q3 is solid. We expect to have slightly lighter bookings than what we’ve had compared to the record quarter that we just had.

Julie Sweet: And maybe just to add a little color. Look, as you can see in our bookings, there is just continued strong demand for the larger transformational deals, right? And the need to, in particular, build the digital core. And I’m personally working right now with clients across insurance, healthcare, consumer goods, banking and telecom, all of whom are very focused on how do we upgrade our €“ get rid of our technical debt, how do we build more resilience. They are trying to build digital products, but they have got really old systems. And so we remain in the early innings of building the kind of digital core that really need to transform every part of the enterprise. And so we continue to feel good, not just about our pipeline, but about the demand we’re seeing really rooted in our view that all companies are going to have to do total enterprise reinvention across the enterprise that it’s really a continuous cycle starting with a digital €“ a strong digital core.

And there is a lot of work to do on building those cores out.

Tien-Tsin Huang: Good. Glad to hear. Very encouraging. So given that, given both your comments and the optimization, I’m just trying to think about is it more playing offense versus defense? So I’m just trying to think about €“ I know a lot of your clients are going through similar optimization efforts as well. How does this one fit given that? And should we still think about this within the 10 to 30 basis points of typical margin expansion that we think about sort of philosophically? Or could this be incremental?

KC McClure: Yes. So just let me answer the last part first, is you should view this as creating the room in our P&L to ensure that we can continue to deliver on that enduring shareholder value model, including the 10 to 30 basis points, which for a short period of time will be on an adjusted basis. So €“ and as you think about it, it is €“ I like that, is it offense or defense. It is offensive. I mean if you look at where we are today, right, we’ve got record bookings, a strong quarter of €“ strong view of the year, 8% to 10%, 91% chargeability. We’re going after structural cost, right, to ensure that we’re in a better position. As you know, we’ve been dealing with the difficult challenges of compounding wage inflation.

And we’ve been doing that with pricing, but we’ve also been doing that with cost efficiencies and digitizing. And we have identified an opportunity to go after more structural costs to kind of create that resilience and that room in the P&L as we look forward. So very much in our view, getting ahead of and dealing with these structural issues that have been created over the last couple of years.

Tien-Tsin Huang: Awesome. That’s great. Great results then. Thank you.

Julie Sweet: Thank you.

Operator: And our next question comes from the line of James Faucette with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.