EPAM Systems, Inc. (NYSE:EPAM) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

David Grossman: No. I just wanted to clarify, so excluding seasonality, right? If things stabilize from here, things would be flattish sequentially, right, excluding the seasonal dynamic.

Arkadiy Dobkin: I think earlier what I would commented, in June when we talked last time and in May kind of when we were clearly felt that situation worse than we expected before. We said that we are thinking about two quarters, three quarters, four quarters. And I think that’s the feeling which we still have today, okay? Because it’s very difficult to predict like you are asking when. So I do believe that within this timeframe, we will probably will get to the situation when sequential — quarterly sequential growth will start to recover. But we clearly — we will be updating this quarter-after-quarter. So we definitely see it slow down. We are definitely seeing different signs from the clients. But again, some clients when they made some decisions, they within themselves have some type of inertia, which would take some time.

All market will be very clearly changed or less satisfaction with some other matters will be not as high, okay? Some of this has started to feel, that’s what given us some level of opportunities. But I don’t think we can say anything more than another two some level, three quarters from now, maybe four some level.

David Grossman: Got it. All right. Thanks. I appreciate that. And then just back to your own internal efforts to geographically diversify. And without getting too far into the details, are there some high level dashboard items that you can share that would provide some insight into recruiting kind of yield utilization, attrition? Anything that would give us a sense of kind of how these new geographies are ramping?

Arkadiy Dobkin: Okay. You are asking about what we feel about our progress with diversifying like our global delivery, is this…

David Grossman: Correct.

Arkadiy Dobkin: Okay.

David Grossman: Correct.

Arkadiy Dobkin: Okay. So, I think, we are actually pretty much satisfied with the progress. I think our efforts in India and Latin America definitely starting to pay out. India, right now the second largest location we have built and that was part of the lab, which we started in May 2022, where we at least all of you had said, [inaudible] what we are planning to do. So right now, Ukraine and Belarus production together, it’s more like 25%, 26% for the total capacity. Where India — Latin America caveat, probably, by the end of the year, it will be closer to 18%, 20%. The quality and the effort which we put in there are definitely improving. We also have very specific programs how to share knowledge between people who stay and depart for a long time and how to raise the bar with improvement and operations.

I think we still committed very much to Ukraine. We do believe that it will be growth there. Yes, we don’t know when, but maybe we will be very much aligned with the sequential growth, which we are expecting in two quarters, three quarters, four quarters coming back. So besides India and Latin America, which is more traditional, we have actually Central Western Asia, which is interesting, because it’s, I call it, a significant number of people who knows how well it could be located during the last 18 months. So, we have very interesting ways and we have potentially a very good demographics for the growth of the target in these countries and clients started to experience this and getting comfortable. And again, with the demand coming back, I think, it will be a good opportunity for us.

And finally, more traditional fast location, Central Eastern Europe, mostly inside of EU, sometimes outside of EU, what, Hungary, Poland, this is very quality — high quality engineering location for us. Clients very comfortable there. In good demand environment, it’s always very high demand. So it’s also becoming stronger because good level of talents located from our traditional data centers. So I think we go in actually to the direction of building probably the most balanced global delivery platform. And as soon as the rebound will be started, we will feel comfortable to grow. One of the important things and we mentioned this, we very carefully kind of balance in the cost structure is because in all of the sectors which I outlined, there are different cost structures and we are going back to improve our gross margins by reallocating focuses across these locations.

So if it’s a short question, we will be able to provide quality which clients expected from us, it’s simply kind of recent clients, but it’s actually very much minimum.

David Grossman: Got it. Thanks very much. Really appreciate that color.

Arkadiy Dobkin: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And one moment please for our next question. The next question will come from Maggie Nolan of William Blair. Your line is open.

Maggie Nolan: Hi. Thank you. Just to follow-up on that last question and your last comment there, Ark, around the margins. Can you give us a little bit of a preliminary thought on what all of this might mean for gross margins into 2024, when we might see things kind of start to pick up and to what magnitude?