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Accenture plc (ACN)

Q3 2020 Earnings Call· Thu, Jun 25, 2020

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Accenture’s Third Quarter Fiscal 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations, Angie Park. Please go ahead.

Angie Park

Analyst

Thank you, Greg and thanks everyone for joining us today on our third quarter fiscal 2020 earnings announcement. As Greg just mentioned, I am Angie Park, Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations. On today’s call, you will hear from Julie Sweet, our Chief Executive Officer; and KC McClure, our Chief Financial Officer. We hope you have had an opportunity to review the news release we issued a short time ago. Let me quickly outline the agenda for today’s call. Julie will begin with an overview of our results. KC will take you through the financial details, including the income statement and balance sheet along with some key operational metrics for the third quarter. Julie will then provide a brief update on our market positioning before KC provides our business outlook for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2020. We will then take your questions before Julie provides a wrap up at the end of the call. Some of the matters we will discuss on this call, including our business outlook, are forward-looking and as such are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those factors set forth in today’s news release and discussed in our Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in this call. During our call today, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe provide useful information for investors. We include reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures where appropriate to GAAP in our news release or in the Investor Relations section of our website at accenture.com. As always, Accenture assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. Now, let me turn the call over to Julie.

Julie Sweet

Analyst

Thank you, Angie, and thank you everyone for joining us. Since our last earnings call, the world has continued to face unprecedented challenges; health, economic, and social, and throughout Q3 we saw rapidly deteriorating economic conditions globally. I am proud of and want to thank our people and our leaders around the world for coming together in Q3 to continue to deliver on our commitment to our shareholders, our clients, our people, and our communities in the face of this crisis. Before turning to our delivery on these commitments, let me provide a bit more color on the context. Within days of our earnings call on March 19, we continued to quickly mobilize our people to work from home, and during the quarter we had approximately 95% of our people enabled to work remotely. For all of April and May other than China, virtually every country in which we operate was in lockdown. In addition, as you may remember, in January we announced that as of March 1, we were implementing a new growth model and making leadership changes. We seamlessly implemented this new model demonstrating our agility at massive scale, which is a testament to the talent of our over 500,000 people and the strength of our leadership team. So, in terms of delivery on our commitments to our shareholders, we delivered Q3 revenues in line with the range we provided only eight days after the global pandemic was declared, and we hit a new milestone of approximately 70% in the “New,” which is digital, cloud, and security. We delivered $11 billion in new bookings, a 6% increase over Q3 last year, which demonstrates the relevance of our services and our ability to sell in a remote everything world. We continue to invest in our business for the long…

KC McClure

Analyst

Thank you, Julie and thanks to all of you for taking the time to join us on today's call. We are pleased with our third quarter results which were in line with our expectations and reflect the diversity and durability of our growth model across geographies, industries, and services. Our results continue to reinforce the relevance of our offerings and capabilities in the market to deliver value for our clients. Importantly, these results illustrate Accenture's unique ability to manage our business and deliver significant value to our shareholders in a very uncertain environment. Before I get into the details, let me summarize the major headlines of our third quarter results, which reflect continued strong execution against our three financial imperatives. Revenue grew 1.3% in local currency at the top end of our guided range. This includes a reduction of approximately 2% from a decline in revenues from reimbursable travel costs. Taking a look at revenues through an industry lens, the diversity of our portfolio continues to serve us well. Approximately 50% of our revenues came from seven industries that were less impacted from the pandemic and in aggregate grew high-single digits with double-digit growth in software and platforms, life-sciences, and public service. At the same time as we expected, we saw pressure from clients in the highly impacted industries which include travel, retail, energy, high-tech including aerospace and defense and industrials. While performance varied, this group collectively represents over 20% of our revenues and declined high-single digits. Given this is the first quarter of results since the onset of the pandemic, let me share a bit more color on how it shaped our quarter. We had strong momentum coming into the quarter, which continued through March. We began to see the impacts on our business in April and May as…

Julie Sweet

Analyst

Thank you, KC. As we look forward, we are starting to see the overall business environment improve with more engagement with many of our clients. However, the high level of uncertainty persists and it is too early to predict when the pandemic and economic conditions will improve. Now working from home is highly efficient and I am connecting personally with more clients around the world than ever before. I first want to share our perspective on the crisis and how demand is shaping up based on what I'm hearing from CEOs and then bring it to life. Crisis is unique in two ways, first it has created the largest ever change in human behavior, at scale, and almost instantaneously, requiring companies to fill new demand trends, change how they engage with customers and adapt quickly to volatile market conditions, all of which require a strong digital foundation just as they also face massive cost pressures. Second, the pandemic is happening during a period of exponential technology change, which was already driving entirely new ways of doing business. In our future systems research last year, we identified that the top 10% of companies in terms of tech adoption, depth and culture where the leaders are performing twice as well and is the bottom 25%. We believe COVID immediately widened that gap. We see the leaders doubling down on their investments while the laggards recognize the speed to accelerate the pace of their transformation. Companies are turning to Accenture as the trusted partner with the industry experience and the ability to help them create investment capacity and change at scale and to execute with multidisciplinary teams, spanning strategy and consulting to operations and trust matters more than ever, making our strong client relationships and reputation a critical advantage. This is reflected in…

KC McClure

Analyst

Thanks Julie. Before I get into our business outlook, as I did last quarter, I would like to remind you that given the coronavirus pandemic, there are a number of factors that we may not be able to accurately predict, including the duration and magnitude of the impact, the pace of recovery, as well as those described in the quarterly filing we made earlier today. Now with that said, let me turn to our business outlook. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, we expect revenues to be in the range of $10.6 billion to $11.0 billion. This assumes the impact of FX will be approximately negative 1 compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019 and reflects an estimated negative 3% to positive 1% growth in local currency and includes approximately negative 2% from the decline in revenues from reimbursable travel. For the full fiscal year 2020, based on how the rates have been trending over the last few weeks, we continue to expect the impact of FX on our results in U.S. dollars will be approximately negative 1.5% compared to fiscal 2019. For the full fiscal 2020, we now expect revenue to be in the range of 3.5% to 4.5% growth in local currency over fiscal 2019. For operating margin, we now expect fiscal year 2020 to be 14.7%, a 10 basis point expansion over our fiscal 2019 results. We now expect our annual effective tax rate to be in the range of 23.5% to 24.5%. This compares to an effective tax rate of 22.5% in fiscal 2019. For earnings per share we now expect full-year diluted EPS for fiscal 2020 to be in the range of $7.57 to $7.70 or 3% to 5% growth over fiscal 2019 results. For the full fiscal 2020 we now expect operating cash flows to be in the range of $6.45 billion to $6.95 billion, property and equipment additions to be approximately $650 million, and free cash flow to be in the range of $5.8 billion to $6.3 billion. Our free cash flow guidance reflects a very strong free cash flow to net income ratio of 1.2 to 1.3. Finally, we continue to expect to return at least $4.8 billion through dividends and share repurchases as we remain committed to returning a substantial portion of our cash to our shareholders. With that, let's open up so we can take your questions. Over to Angie.

Angie Park

Analyst

Thanks KC. I would ask that you each keep to one question and a follow-up to allow as many people as possible to ask a question. Greg, would you provide instructions for those on the call?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Tien-tsin Huang from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Tien-tsin Huang

Analyst

Hey, thanks so much Greg. Tien-tsin here. Just on the – I want to hone in on the strong bookings comment for the fourth quarter, can you maybe give us a little bit more on the type of work you are doing, consulting versus outsourcing, but also what is COVID-specific work versus transformational? And maybe also Julie, I think last quarter you mentioned or talked about clients adapting to a new normal. Has that happened or is Accenture really driving or just adapting to demand in this uncertain market, as you called it?

KC McClure

Analyst

Yes, so maybe I’ll start and then Julie can weigh in on demand. So, Tien-tsin, thanks for your question. In terms of strong bookings, maybe I'll just talk a little bit about what, maybe if I could take this opportunity to talk about guidance overall, and I'll hit on the bookings point as well. So, in terms of what we’re talking - what we’re looking at for the fourth quarter in terms of both, you know, our revenue and our bookings, I want to put some context into our guidance. Obviously, it continues to be an uncertain environment; and in revenue, we always aim for the top portion of our guided range, but as we said last quarter, this quarter, the entire range is at play. And if I put the context of Q4 into what we experienced in Q3, you know, we have [indiscernible] momentum coming into the third quarter and that carried through in March, and we began to see the impacts of the pandemic on our business in April and May. And so, as we think about Q4, as it relates to what we saw in Q3, at the top end of our revenue guidance range, it implies an improved performance over what we saw in April and May, and at the bottom end of our revenue guidance for the fourth quarter, it means we’ve stabilized. And so, as it relates specifically to your question on bookings, we were able to grow very strong pipeline during the same time, and we do see that we have the potential for strong bookings in the fourth quarter. I’ll let Julie give you a little bit of view on that - on the color as it relates to what we’re seeing in demand in the market.

Julie Sweet

Analyst

Sure, and as between kind of consulting and outsourcing, we saw sort of similar patterns in Q3 in this. We had lower sales in strategy and consulting in Q3, and we’re going to have some lower sales, you know, in Q4. We sort of expect that as we continue, but as we step it back, let’s just look at demand, right, because the whole set of demand that started in Q3 that will continue into Q4 in some areas around a few things. So, health and public sector, right. So, we saw a surge in need in health and public sector. For example, we became, we pioneered in the - before the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the U.S. working with partners in health and Salesforce, diverse, you know, contracting, tracing applications and operation, which we've now taken to Phoenix; for example in the State of California where we’re working with Salesforce and AWS, that work will continue. You saw us working around the world doing things like using our industry and technology expertise to set up virtual agents like in India with MyGov and Microsoft in [indiscernible] we set up virtual agent. If you go to Brazil, we worked with Microsoft to set up telemedicine for a major hospital there. That work and the trends around telemedicine and the need to support citizens through the pandemic will continue, we believe. And what’s important there is, it is not simply - this isn’t about technology right? This is about taking all of our insights from the needs of – from health and public sector and supporting citizenry [ph] with technology, with the ecosystem partners, and quite honestly innovating remotely. Right? The work that we've been doing and that will continue. You also see the supply chain really being an area of…

Tien-tsin Huang

Analyst

Great, that's good stuff. Good color. I'll get back in the queue. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thanks. Your next question comes from the line of Lisa Ellis from MoffettNathanson. Please go ahead.

Lisa Ellis

Analyst

Hi, good morning and good to hear your voices. Just a follow-on on Tien-tsin question. I mean, you obviously recorded solid revenue in 3Q, solid growth in bookings, have a strong pipeline again for 4Q. At the same time the WEO just downgraded its economic outlook to nearly a 5% decline for this year. So, which is pretty terrible. So I'm just trying to ask, can you provide color on how those two things and those two trends reconcile, meaning, are you seeing that businesses either a, have not made revisions yet to their overall IT budgets to reflect a weaker longer-term economic outlook or more optimistically, be they have, but they have actually reallocated more dollars into IT to drive the digital transformations or is it that you're picking up share? I mean, I guess maybe just some color on kind of how you reconciled those two dynamics? Thank you.

Julie Sweet

Analyst

Yes, sure. You know, Lisa remember what we're guiding to is really a modest growth, it would reflect the economic conditions. Right? So what we're seeing in Q4 is we're seeing our business stabilize at what is a much lower level, right than pre-crisis with at the high end of the range, starting to tick up and improve. Right? So that is what's really, as you said like that's how you reconcile that. Right? And as I just went through with Tien-tsin, there are parts of our business that are accelerating like cloud and security and operations. But a big part of our business, our intelligent platform services business, which is 40% was growing double-digits moderated in Q3 and we expect a further moderation reflecting the economic conditions, clients sort of taking a step back and saying, how do I sequence and so, when you look at what's happening, the IT budgets, all the analysts are telling us and we're seeing it is too is that they are declining, but they are focusing on the digital transformation that's needed to navigate. So like the supply chain examples where you have to do this, this is why Lisa, our position is so important right now, because what we can uniquely do is provide cost savings while we transform. When we talk about IT modernization and managed services, we're doing managed services and we talked about this in prior quarters called Living Systems, where we're taking down the costs, but we're helping them have DevOps and Agile at scale to get their product releases faster. We are seeing deals like if you look at the one I highlighted on SAP, it has two components where they put the global beverage company. It was re-platforming, but it also had a managed service component that was modernizing and cutting their costs and so what we're seeing is this flight to Accenture for flight to quality, because we can deliver with the ability to increase investment capacity, decrease costs, but still modernize like what we do with operations. And so, of course we're going to be impacted, but we've got severely impacted is went through businesses that industries that of course we're good, we're feeling all of those effects, but we believe our results, we don't know, nobody else has come yet are taking share in this environment.

Lisa Ellis

Analyst

Terrific, thank you. And then maybe my follow on is just on the talent side, can you provide, I mean, I know you're an environment where attrition just dropped to 11%. Not surprisingly, given the environment. Utilization is also down a little bit, but of course you're continuing as you said to maintain promotions, maintain higher, and can you just remind us of how you manage talent through this type of environment, so you emerge with a stronger bench on the other side? Thanks.

Julie Sweet

Analyst

Sure. I mean, it's a great question and something we really focus on because our competitive advantage is phenomenal talent. And the underlying fundamentals of the market, the need to digitally transform and of our business remain strong. And so, we are very focused on preserving that great talent and our strategic capabilities because we have everything from Strategy and Consulting to operations and so that's been our principle. So we're pulling the usual levers of less hiring, except in specific areas of replacing subcontractors if we don't need it. We continue to promote, but we moderated the promotions. But it's important that we're delivering still on it. We've delayed some start dates, as you would do, as you would imagine. The second thing we're doing is, we did just put in this new growth model and we were able in a more simplified organization to identify efficiencies. So we're going after some cost structural decreases that are helping. And then as we move forward, we'll do things like we're in our annual performance process. And so, the pace of how we do our kind of business as usual, managing out of our lower performers is another lever that we can pull as we look forward, and what we're really focused on is making sure, like say for our intelligent platform services business, yes it's moderating, but we know it is an absolute critical part of our business. So we're doing a lot of upskilling. I mean, I think this - I'm going to give you a number that I think is so phenomenal. Since the beginning of March, when we hit COVID and we saw the shift in demand in technology we have reskilled 37,000 people in hot areas like cloud since the beginning of March. And these are in sort of 15 to - on average 15 to 20-hour modules of reskilling to pivot. We've taken our Strategy and Consulting people and pivoted to some of the needs for operations in the public sector, because again those are - also require those insights. And the resiliency of a business like ours because we're in multiple industries, multiple types of work and we're able to kind of seamlessly move people who are used to working in these multi-dimensional teams anyway. And by the way, our people love it, because they get great new opportunities. So we feel really good about how we're managing it. And to your point, Lisa, we think we're going to come out much stronger because of how we're delivering for our people.

Lisa Ellis

Analyst

Terrific, great color, thank you. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Dave Koning from Baird. Please go ahead.

David Koning

Analyst

Yes, hey, guys. Thank you and congrats. My question, The New really didn't decelerate that much and maybe that just is a function of exactly you're talking about some of these newer products doing well, while some of the older part decelerated more. As the economy comes back, eventually, do you think The New kind of just gets to just a higher level of growth and then the older services just stay at a lower level? I mean is that really what we're seeing now?

Julie Sweet

Analyst

I mean, look, if you sort of look at it I would start with like we're in the big shock, right? I mean that how fast the economy went down, the need that every business is now a health business and so all of these. So, I don't read too much into a quarter's sort of response in terms of now new versus legacy other than the impact of what's happening to have to move to online everything and remote will absolutely require and is requiring and that's what we see in our pipeline, an acceleration of building the digital foundation which means, companies are going to have to make more choices. And this is why - we used to tell you, our theory was in a financial crisis that the rotation to The New would make us more resilient and that's what is absolutely the facts. So is that - we've seen what's happened. You have to be more digital and that's going to stay and that will no doubt have some effects on where you're spending the money, but it's part of what's driving what we're doing now with our managed services and helping modernize those for our clients in a more cost-effective way to get our clients to The New. And a lot of what we're doing now is taking all of our learning capabilities and building that in for our clients to help them rotate their talent, which they need to do as well.

David Koning

Analyst

Great, thanks. And one quick numbers question. The new reporting on segments with the geos, the margins in the growth markets have been very high this year, and specifically in Q3 was very high, I think 21%. Is there something changing in the environment that allows those margins to be higher? Is that going to continue, or maybe it's just a short-term blip?

KC McClure

Analyst

Yes, thanks for the question. This is the first time that we have provided operating income by market. And the way I would just say, to take a look at operating income across our markets, Dave, would be the very same way that you thought about it as it relates to the operating groups, like you're going to have - we have variations by markets just like we did throughout the years in operating groups. It's really going to be impacted by these services that we do in that market, the mix of industries that we have, any type of economic impacts that are happening in a specific market, as well as maybe investments that we're making particularly to that geography. So I think that's - the lens I would look at operating income would be the same as we've always historically done against operating groups and we manage obviously to overall Accenture operating income. As it relates specifically to the growth markets, we had very strong performance in our Japanese business, which is a major growth driver, and overall our contract performance and profitability is very strong in the growth markets.

David Koning

Analyst

Great, thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Harshita Rawat from Bernstein. Please go ahead.

Harshita Rawat

Analyst

Hi, good morning Julie, KC. My question is, we are seeing in this environment that many companies are starting to rethink work from home policies as a margin driver longer term, given the higher productivity we've seen in this remote working environment. Is this something you're seeing, looking at? And more broadly what have been some of the positive and negative surprises in this new working environment? Thank you.

KC McClure

Analyst

Yes, I think I'll start and Julie can certainly weigh in. I think one of the things that's kind of - you asked about margin and unique in this environment is, what I would say that, and we're taking full advantage of this is the fact that we are really not traveling, particularly for non-billable events and meetings. And so we are using - we're taking full advantage of that and making sure that we continue then to use that extra capacity to invest in our business, to preserve our talent, while at the same time giving margin expansion. So I think for us, that's probably the bigger change within this environment. We have obviously moved - we've always been able to work from home to a great degree, and within our centers, we have been able to make that change as well this quarter. But that's not really going to be a significant increase or decrease in margin in and of itself.

Julie Sweet

Analyst

And then if you look at it, as it relates to ourselves, it's complicated. Right? Looking at our operations business it's 24/7 and we run shifts and we get to have the advantage of sort of using assets over and over. So, I mean, it's a - it's not a straightforward sort of discussion around that, but maybe let's just take a step back, what are the realities, right? We're opened 30% of our offices now, but we're not putting a lot of people back in the office and neither are our clients around the globe because we're dealing with an ongoing health situation. And so, whether you like it or not, remote working is going to be here to stay at a pretty high level for some time. And so, we and our clients are focused on understanding where does that make sense. I was just talking to a technology company yesterday where what they've said is, look, everything is working pretty well except R&D, not because R&D needs to be in the office, but they're just struggling to collaborate as well. And so, company by company, are learning. I give a lot of advice to CEOs about this because there are some who've got really excited about, let's get rid of all our real estate. Back in the '90s, we pioneered remote working and we called it hoteling, and particularly in the U.S., we took out a lot of real estate because we said our people are at our client sites and they're - or they could be home. And what we found, in fact, over the last five years, when I was running North America, we started gradually to expand the footprint again because there is a benefit of bringing people together as well. Now, we've proved you can innovate remotely as I gave some of those examples, but I would say it's going to be cautious. As a respect to sort of driving our business, what it has helped CEOs really understand is some of the areas in some industries that have resisted say finance and accounting and certain areas saying no, no, no, we need to have the teams together is to recognize that they can really rethink like what should they do in-house? What can they rely on a partner like Accenture? How to get the right balance, both from an expertise and a cost perspective, but just as much this idea of leveraging others for digital transformation and you're going to see more of that thinking. I mean, when you move to the cloud, you're basically saying you have this important permanent third-party partners that are running your business, right? And so, how digital transformation happens at speed going forward is really going to be this weaving of partners together, which is why the fact that we're so trusted really helps us in this environment.

Harshita Rawat

Analyst

Great, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Edward Caso from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Edward Caso

Analyst

Hi, good morning. Can you talk a little bit more about your Consulting bookings? How much of the sort of the solid quarter do you expect that you had in the quarter was related to the responding to the COVID crisis? And I'm not sure I heard it in response to Tien-tsin's question, but the strong awards outlook for Q4, how does that split out between Consulting and Outsourcing? Thank you.

KC McClure

Analyst

Yes, hey, nice to talk to you. In terms of what we were guiding to in Q4, we see overall stronger bookings. I'll leave it at that in terms of, you know, we don't really give a sense or guide to the overall fourth quarter. And I think, just in terms of what was in our consulting bookings, Julie provided a lot of color, we had, as we talked about our overall bookings were 70% in The New which is digital to move to the cloud. Security was really important in this current environment, as well as other digital areas. So, I don't know, Julie, if there's anything else in addition you want to add on.

Julie Sweet

Analyst

No, I mean as I said, our bookings were kind of sort of split between Outsourcing and Consulting sort of similar to that pattern overall.

KC McClure

Analyst

No, change there, yes.

Julie Sweet

Analyst

In the quarter.

KC McClure

Analyst

Yes, in the quarter. That's right.

Edward Caso

Analyst

And my other question is around utilization, it went down a few points here. Have you found bottom yet on utilization or we're sort of picking up information that you guys are doing some layoffs and so forth and wondering if you've been able to sort of stabilize the utilization yet?

KC McClure

Analyst

Yes, maybe I'll just quickly on utilization, yes, we did do a tick down in Q3. It's nothing that we're concerned about. It's really a bit particularly in operations in our centers, as we moved during the time that we moved to work from home, as well as there were some elements - minor elements of work from home restrictions. But that said, it was within the zone that we expected, and we continue to deliver for our clients in their time of need.

Julie Sweet

Analyst

Yes. And with respect to managing, as I've said before, we've identified some real areas of efficiencies and so that has obviously headcount implications to it, which may be what you're calling layoffs. We really see it is as focusing on our cost structure, and then otherwise managing our supply and demand as I went through before in a pretty ordinary course. We don't see some extraordinary workforce actions, and remember that Q4 guidance builds that in and that we think we're either stabilizing to slightly up in terms of our business environment, because if you look at our guidance, we're pretty pleased. I mean Q3 had a great strong March. We don't have that in Q4. And so we see - do see our business either stabilizing or slightly up.

KC McClure

Analyst

Yes and then I just - another fact on that, as you saw from our - our headcount went up sequentially 1%. Right? So for the quarter, we're up over 6% for the year.

Edward Caso

Analyst

Thank you.

Angie Park

Analyst

Great, thanks, Ed. Greg, we have time for one more question, and then Julie will wrap up the call.

Operator

Operator

Okay. That question comes from the line of Bryan Bergin from Cowen. Please go ahead.

Bryan Bergin

Analyst

Hi, good morning, thank you. I wanted to ask on bookings conversion. Can you comment on clients' willingness to ramp up some of these large projects in this environment? I'm curious, if you're seeing any extension of the period between signings and project startups and how that might impact near-term outlook?

Julie Sweet

Analyst

Well, I mean, our outlook includes kind of what we're seeing and it's a little bit all over the map, right? You've got some clients who want to go faster, because they need the savings faster, you have other clients to maybe having a slower ramp-up. So I'd say it's mixed.

KC McClure

Analyst

Yes. And I think maybe in terms of our outlook, maybe the way I'd answer it too is, if you look at our Q4 revenue guidance, I think there is really kind of what would put us at the top versus what would put us at the bottom is probably two swing factors. One would be really how the industries - that industry dynamic that we talked about, how that continues to play out and then how the Strategy & Consulting work evolves in the quarter.

Bryan Bergin

Analyst

Okay. And then just on your comments on digital, can you give us a sense on how those underlying components performs interactive relative to cloud and security and any quantification there?

Julie Sweet

Analyst

Well, we don't, we don't know about quantify. But as I told you earlier, right, we had Accenture Interactive pre-crisis have been significantly growing and it was significantly impacted in Q3 and that primarily around industries and kind of focus, so you've got that. And then, whereas we sort of look at cloud that really was up and security was up, and remember Intelligent Platform Services came down. So those are kind of the big components that we normally kind of give you a sense of.

KC McClure

Analyst

Yes, I would say just - just to add on to what Julie said when we talked about the industry dynamics that I talked about earlier, that really plays out the same way with Accenture Interactive. There was growth in Accenture Interactive and the less impacted industries. Right? And they had also a similar dynamic on the areas that had more pressure - industries that had more pressure this quarter they have some declines.

Julie Sweet

Analyst

Great. Well thank you, everyone. Before I wrap up, I did want to give a special shout out to Fabio Benasso, who leads our Italian business to his leadership team and all of our people in Italy. As you all saw, Italy was actually in lockdown in the entire three months of the quarter and it was an extraordinarily difficult time, and yet they delivered 8% revenue growth in local currency in Q3, because they stayed so close to our clients and to each other and I just thought it deserved a very special mention. As I wrap up, we really believe that Accenture is uniquely positioned today to help our clients succeed in the current environment, both because of what we do as well as how we do it. We are committed to shared success with our clients, people, shareholders and communities to living our core values and to being a trusted leader and responsible business. Thank you to our people and leaders for how you come together every day to deliver on our commitments, and a special thank you to our shareholders for your continued trust and support. Be well everyone, and thank you for joining.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Teleconferencing. You may now disconnect.