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

Keshav Murugesh: Okay, that’s a great question, Maggie. I think what it has done is it has kept enhancing the impact of our domain specialization and our core differentiator that we have always spoken about to clients. Every time there was a change in technology, the fact that clients were working with people who understood the core of the business first and then integrated these technologies to deliver a higher value proposition in terms of impact, efficiency, cost and other things, actually has been really the core. I would say for us, it’s essentially the fact that it has enhanced our capability around domain and the fact that people now realize how important domain is in this business, while you should expect that technology will keep changing and we will only keep getting enhancement better across time.

David Mackey: Yes, and I think from a business perspective, Maggie, and we’ve spoken about it to most of you folks and most of our investors at this point as well, but what we’ve seen historically is that while technology creates certain headwinds to our business, right – we used to talk about WNS having 2% to 3% year-over-year headwinds built into our contracts, and technology turns like RPA, like AI, like machine learning have accelerated that productivity that we provide to clients into the 3% to 4% range. We know that when we leverage technology, some of that benefit is going to go back to the client, but we’ve also seen, and Keshav spoke about it in his prepared remarks, is that what this does is it opens up new areas for us to get into, both within existing clients as well as the pressure to drive new clients to look at outsourcing.

While we know that these technologies will create some additional headwinds from a productivity perspective, we also know and have seen consistently that what it does is drive increased demand, and that’s why when you look at our business, despite the fact that productivity improvements have been increasing, we’ve been delivering progressively higher growth rates in the face of those higher headwinds.

Keshav Murugesh: Yes, and I just want to add maybe to that last statement, Dave. The fact that if you look at our results over the past few years, when technology kept getting unleashed and introduced and we kept on solving it, our revenues actually grew from single-digit numbers to consistently double-digit and increasing in terms of growth, and at the same time in spite of giving some of the wins back to clients, our margins actually have significantly grown over this entire period, so that is the opportunity. The fact that 75% of this industry is still not penetrated is, I think, the biggest opportunity coming from this new paradigm.

Maggie Nolan: Thank you, that’s great to hear. Then for my follow-up, you mentioned travel, seeing some conservatism. Can you just kind of walk us through what you think travel can do this year? Can it return kind of closer to pre-pandemic levels, or how is your outlook specifically for that vertical?

David Mackey: Yes, I’ll–oh, do you want to go ahead, Sanjay? Go ahead.

Sanjay Puria: From an overall talent perspective, definitely at this stage you can see the travel industry has still–it’s come back at 90% of the pre-pandemic level, but from our [indiscernible] perspective, you’ll see that significantly we have shown that growth, which means that it’s not only just about winning new clients but expanding the relationship with our existing clients over there. But at the same time, the comfort levels are still–they have come back only by 15% of the pre-pandemic, and as well [indiscernible] and there’s an opportunity within volume, and from [indiscernible] 1.5% to 2%. That upside potential is [indiscernible].