Concentrix Corporation (NASDAQ:CNXC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Ruplu Bhattacharya: Okay, thank you for all the details there, I appreciate that. For my follow up, if I can ask about the growth rate for the new economy clients. You know three quarters ago they were growing at 47%. I think you mentioned 13%. What are you seeing with respect to those type of clients? I mean, are they more hesitant to spend? When do you think – what do you think is a steady state growth rate for the new economy clients. And I was wondering if you can €“ if you’ve mentioned it, maybe I missed this. What was the revenue total contribution from, the new economy clients in fiscal ’22 and what €“ in general, what growth rate should we expect from those clients going forward.

Chris Caldwell: Yeah, so I’ll let Andre answer the total dollar figure for 2022. But just prior to that, you know Ruplu the New Economy Company as we’ve talked about a few times kind of replicate a lot of our verticals that we deal with. So we do have new economy companies within e-commerce. They tend to be feeling the same pain as traditional e-commerce players and some retailers where there’s been less sort of disposable consumption within those areas. We’ve also seen as we’ve mentioned in sort of Q3 and Q4, where the new economy companies where they were focused at really growth and customer acquisition at any cost at sort of the beginning of 2022 to where they are, rightfully so being prudent about their investments and our, you know the services we’re offering them tend to be more traditional services around with cost optimization, process consulting and then really a focus around where they think that they can drive higher returns for their shareholders versus just growth at any cost.

We do expect that the new economy companies will grow at an elevated rate versus enterprise clients. It’s just the nature of the beast that they are building the market where enterprise clients are optimizing their markets. But you know we are still expecting and we still continue to win net new deals in the new economy space that we think that will have the higher elevated growth rate. I’ll pass it to Andre on in terms of the total contribution in ’23.

Andre Valentine: Yeah, so Ruplu the total contribution in fiscal ’22 from new economy clients are about $1.45 billion overall. So right in that 22% to 23% of revenue that has been tracking at frankly each quarter here this year.

Ruplu Bhattacharya: Okay, thanks for that Andre, I appreciated it. If I can ask you one more question on capital allocation priorities. I think you mentioned dividend and debt reduction followed by modest share buybacks. Can you remind us what the target is for leverage and your debt? What leverage ratio are you comfortable with, what is the target? And then I’d like to hear your thoughts on M&A. Is the long term target still to get to the 10 billion in revenues by fiscal ’25 and I think that entailed $1.5 billion of M&A. So in this environment in fiscal ’23, your thoughts on inorganic growth.

Andre Valentine: Yes. So I’ll start with kind of the middle of your question. So the $10 billion is still absolutely our target for 2025 for this business and we’re confident we can get there. You’re right, it requires some amount of M&A in that $1.5 billion range and we still think that that is a good use of capital in this business. We think the industry will continue to consolidate. Clients want to have deeper relationships with less partners and therefore having that scale is important in terms of the capabilities, etcetera. Obviously, what we’ll look for there, first of all, first and foremost the deals need to be accretive to our EPS. They have to hit our targets from a return on capital perspective and then we’re not just looking for scale for scale sake.