WNS (Holdings) Limited (NYSE:WNS) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Sanjay Puria: Yes, at this stage as we provided the guidance based on the visibility, and what Keshav and Dave was talking about some of the conservative forecasts in what clients are providing, based on that, the quarter two we expect to be slightly up as compared to quarter one. But having said that, just want to remind that still does not factor the short term revenue, where we don’t have visibility. It does not factor some of the forecasts where clients have not committed yet and exactly what we saw in quarter one. When we entered quarter one, it was a similar situation, but as volumes [indiscernible] keep on coming up as we were nearing each of the months, so [indiscernible] a wait and watch. Also, just wanted to add [indiscernible] which was a factor in our guidance earlier [indiscernible] from an onshore to an offshore that’s already part of the [indiscernible].

David Mackey: Yes, I think Dave, to Sanjay’s point, when we look at the sequential numbers, we’re obviously expecting a more modest growth rate as compared to what we saw sequentially from Q4 to Q1. That being said, we significantly outperformed what our expectations were for Q1, and I think some of this is the nature of the assets that we’ve acquired, that have less visibility but higher growth, right? I think when you look at the numbers that we provide between that and the conservatism that we’ve baked in from our client forecasts, what you’re going to see is more upside to our numbers than you’ve historically seen, but less visibility to those numbers. Our hope certainly is that as we move throughout Q2, as Sanjay mentioned, we’ll continue to build on that number, but in terms of visibility and in terms of what’s baked into our guidance at this point, it does show a slow-down in the growth rate sequentially from Q4.

Dave Koning: Yes, that all makes sense. Then just a follow-up, in the new segment guidance, first of all some cool new industry acronyms, so those are kind of interesting – I like it. But then also, there’s a new line called less reconciling items, that used to be kind of $2 million to $3 million a quarter, kind of going back many–like, for a lot of quarters, and then the last few quarters, it’s kind of ramped up to $7 million to $9 million of a headwind. What is that line and why is it higher now?

David Mackey: Yes, so if you look at what’s showing up in the reconciling items, and you’ll see it in both the revenue and the cost line, on the revenue line, what is in there–because if you look at kind of how the SBUs are laid out now in addition to kind of the normal eight verticals that we would talk about, right – travel, shipping and logistics, healthcare, we also have procurement that’s broken out separately because it’s run as a separate business. These reconciling items on the revenue line are really two things. One is the duplicate revenue credit that comes from procurement, and the second is the FX gain and loss line. Those, because we can’t specifically allocate them to an SBU, sit as a reconciling item.

On the cost side, you’ll see that same procurement duplicate revenue credit go up with the cost. The second piece that shows up in the cost unallocated is unallocated facility costs, so seats that aren’t being used, that have been returned back to the company by the SBUs. You’re going to see that number move around on a quarter to quarter basis, but overall that hopefully should give you some color in terms of what that reconciling column is in terms of the revenue and margins.

Dave Koning: Yes, thanks. Got you, appreciate it.

David Mackey: Thanks Dave.

Keshav Murugesh: Thank you.

Operator: Please stand by for the next question. The next question comes from Maggie Nolan with William Blair. Your line is open.

Maggie Nolan: Thank you so much, and congrats on the results. I wanted to ask you, what have past technology waves meant for your value proposition as a company?