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

Jason Peterson: Yeah. I think I will step in. And we are probably not quite ready to talk about the 2024 in terms of, let’s say, specifics or even ranges. But Ark explained, as we moved into the different delivery locations, obviously, we did so quickly. In some cases, we probably have a little bit more balance in the higher cost geographies, including traditional kind of on-site markets. We would look to kind of rebalance that somewhat. And then the other thing as we have talked about over the last couple of quarters is that, as we move into new geographies, and particularly, as we sort of either relocated or stood up new geographies quickly, we ended up with a somewhat more sort of senior delivery organization and delivery pyramid and we are working to begin to introduce more juniors later in the year that would then give us a more balanced pyramid and therefore also improve margins.

And so that, obviously, combined with utilization improvement, would be the things that we are looking to do to sort of stabilize and improve gross margins over time

Maggie Nolan: Okay. Thank you. And then on the new logo additions, it was good to hear the progress on that this quarter. Can you talk a little bit about the ability to keep the sales force intact during all this transformation and then any kind of patterns that you are seeing on those new logos in terms of the time it’s taking for them to convert to revenue?

Arkadiy Dobkin: So, I think, I will comment on new logo and new business is kind of illustrated that while sales force is also some dynamics. So I think, directionally, it’s working through positively right now. I think after our comments like several quarters ago, when we were in the middle of all these allocations points and we have to deal with thousands of people, so it will slow down. Right now, it’s all coming…

Jason Peterson: Yeah. So very much actively focused on external opportunities and much of the internal things that we had to manage over the last, say, four quarters are substantially behind us and there’s a focus with both the account teams, the sales force and the executives on driving incremental growth.

Maggie Nolan: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Ramsey El-Assal of Barclays. Your line is open.

Ramsey El-Assal: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to follow-up with your mentioning kind of tighter integrations and partnerships with the hyperscalers. Can you talk about the strategy, how these relationships might act or expand your capabilities or your addressable market, and then also just comment on whether this is part of positioning EPAM for growth once the demand environment picks up again?

Arkadiy Dobkin: Yeah. I think it’s dynamic also in general because of the market change in comparison like during a year ago. And now we are talking about much closer relationship from both point of view, because we definitely, like everybody else, focusing on client’s perspective where hyperscalers can open additional doors and all competitors doing the same and this is kind of nothing new. On another side, the partner should become stronger because just migration to the cloud is kind of as is business becoming not so interesting as usually. It means very complex modernization efforts and this is where strength of EPAM come in from. This is why the partnership with hyperscalers become more important, not only for us, but for them as well, because EPAM has a reputation, which actually can do complex modernization — complex innovation.

That’s what we mentioned based on the status of partner of the year in this category with Microsoft. That’s exactly a confirmation on this. And as we mentioned, we will be following this some announcement during the next couple of weeks, which will be confirming improved partnership levels, specifically because of our ability to deliver complexity. And it’s definitely a very good preparation from our point of view for rebound, because when demand will be back, everything which wasn’t finished, and it’s a lot, in all categories, in cloud and data modernization projects add huge pressure on demand for data engineering because of the AI components. So the hyperscalers relationship will be very critical.

Ramsey El-Assal: All right. Thank you. And a follow-up for me. Can you contrast the demand environment in Europe versus North America? It looks like the growth rates are different in those geographies, although admittedly, they don’t — necessarily have not tabulated the constant currency number. But is it a different environment you are seeing in different geographies or is it very similar trends across the business regardless of geography?

Jason Peterson: Yeah. So, certainly, some of what happened in Europe is due to foreign exchange. But what we are seeing is that some of the larger kind of budget reductions and conservatism is actually showing up more in North American clients. Think about the couple of clients we have talked about in healthcare and tech. Those were both North American clients. We have seen less of these types of reductions in spend in Europe. At the same time, we have got some pretty good traction also even in the consumer and retail side in Europe. And so, yes, there does seem to be a bit of a divergence, but we will see what happens as we work through the remainder of the year.