Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cognizant Technology Solutions First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would like now to turn the conference over to Mr. Tyler Scott, Vice President and Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. By now, you should have received a copy of the earnings release and the investor supplement for the company’s first quarter 2023 results. If you have not, copies are available on our website, cognizant.com. The speakers we have on today’s call are Ravi Kumar, Chief Executive Officer; and Jan Siegmund, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the comments made on today’s call and some of the responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties as described in the company’s earnings release and other filings with the SEC. Additionally, during our call today, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe provide useful information for our investors. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures where appropriate to the corresponding GAAP measures can be found in the company’s earnings release and other filings with the SEC. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Ravi. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Tyler. Good afternoon, everyone. When I spoke to you early February, I was just 3 weeks into my role. I explained my plan to move rapidly up the learning curve by embarking on a global listening and learning tour with associates, clients and partners. I also mentioned that I would meet with more than 100 clients and as many of our associates as possible. In addition, I outlined three interrelated priorities: making Cognizant an employer of choice in its industry; accelerate revenue growth, especially by winning large deals; and enhancing our operational discipline. I will comment on progress of each of these areas, but first, I want to cover a few of the quarter’s financial and operational highlights. In quarter one, we delivered revenue of $4.8 billion, a decline of 0.3% year-over-year as reported, but a growth of 1.5% in constant currency, above the high-end of our guidance range. Our adjusted operating margin was 14.6%. We recorded strong quarterly bookings growth of 28% year-over-year and ended quarter one with record trailing 12 months bookings of $25.6 billion in the trailing 12 months book-to-bill of 1.3x. Approximately, 30% of our in-quarter or quarter one bookings were large deals, which we define as total contract value of about $50 million compared to approximately 20% for all of 2022. We were very pleased with our first quarter bookings performance as well as the build in our pipeline, which includes a strong mix of large new opportunities. I am especially pleased to see the continuing reduction in our attrition with trailing 12-month voluntary attrition for our technology services business declining to 23%, down 3% points sequentially and 7 points Y-on-Y year-on-year. While Jan will cover our financial performance at the business segment level, given the importance of financial services on our momentum,…

Thank you, Ravi, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I touch on the details of the first quarter, I would like to spend a moment on the NextGen program we announced today. During the second quarter, we initiated NexGen to simplify our operating model, optimize our corporate functions and realign our office space to reflect our hybrid work environment. We expect to record total estimated NexGen costs of $400 million, approximately $350 million in 2023 and $50 million in 2024. This consists of $200 million of employee severance and other costs primarily related to non-billable and corporate personnel which we expect to mostly incur in 2023. The personnel-related actions under this program are expected to impact approximately 3,500 associates or approximately 1% of our total workforce. We expect to realize savings from our NexGen initiative in the back half of this year. The NexGen program also includes $200 million of costs related to the consolidation of office space and approximately $150 million in 2023 and $50 million in 2024. We do not anticipate these real estate actions will begin to generate savings until 2024. By 2025, we expect to reduce our annual real estate costs by approximately $100 million versus 2022. This reduction is net of investments to expand our real estate footprint in smaller cities, primarily in India, in support of our hybrid work strategy. Our full year operating margin outlook includes the anticipated impact of these actions. As Ravi mentioned, we expect this program to help enable us to deliver 20 to 40 basis points of margin expansion in 2024, in addition to funding revenue growth opportunities. This 2024 expectation assumes no further deterioration of the economic environment. Beyond 2024, we are focused on driving structural cost improvements to fund investments to support revenue growth, our people and modernization…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Lisa Ellis with MoffettNathanson. Please proceed with your question.

Terrific. Thanks for taking my question. Good nice uptick here on the bookings side. I just wanted to talk about this dynamic a little bit. I mean you understand it a little bit more. Is it something that has been a little bit of a struggle with Cognizant over the last few years. You’re showing 9%, I think, bookings growth year-on-year, but that was a book-to-bill of like 1.3x, which is – implies a bit of a disconnect in sort of how bookings translate to revenues. Can you just talk a little bit – I know you mentioned you’re refilling the backlog and you’re expecting to come in later in the year. Can you just help us a little bit again with how we should think about that dynamic, the translation of bookings into revenue and the timing and maybe what’s going on with the backlog or with the underlying base of revenue? Thank you.

Thank you, Lisa. I’m going to – this is Ravi here. I’m going to start off and then ask Jan to add. We recorded very strong bookings, 28% year-on-year and 12-month trailing bookings of $25.6 billion. And you’re right, book-to-bill ratio is at 1.3x. I think the way to see it is it has multiple factors associated with it. First and foremost, how much of it is renewable? How much of it is new? How much of it is expansion? While we don’t give those numbers out, we had healthy expansion and new business in comparison to the past. We had four large deals more than total contract value of $100 million. Just to give you an order of magnitude. Last year, same quarter, we did not have any large deals. Large deals come with a little bit of – it comes with a runway where a lot of it is at the end of the cycle or rather at the back of the cycle. Short deals, small deals come with immediate short-fuse demand, which gives you revenue on the short run. Large deals give you revenue on the medium to long run, while in the short run, they take a little time to ramp up. So in summary, how this translates to revenue in the short and the medium and the long run is dependent on what percentage of it is large deals, what percentage of it is small deals. You would appreciate small deals are actually a little softer for us because we’ve – we know that the discretionary spend is softening in an economic environment we are in. So the large deals gives us the opportunity to accrue revenues at the back end of this year and the next year while we build the pipe for the future. Our pipeline is looking strong as well.

Yes. Lisa, the 9% trailing 12 months bookings growth is really entirely driven by the very strong bookings growth in the quarter. In this quarter, as you know, we had three quarters of flat bookings that contributed to this overall trailing 12-month result. And so the revenue growth, in this case, will be picking up. We expect a model in our revenue guidance, some revenue impact from these larger deals picking and starting and ramping up in the second quarter – in the second half of this fiscal year and then have a full year impact next year. So for the second quarter, impacting our guidance is also the anticipation that we see softness in the small-scale bookings. So the second quarter, in a sense, it’s kind of a transition quarter, I would say, because we have the high bookings growth, hopefully, continued momentum in bookings as we go through the year. But we do have a short-term revenue impact from the decline of these shorter and smaller deals that are impacted by the economy, by discretionary spend. So that’s kind of how I think best to understand the relationship between bookings and revenue growth.

Thank you. And then maybe for my follow-up. Ravi, this one is for you. I know you mentioned you’ve been out talking to 100-plus clients and have now been at Cognizant for 3.5 months or so. Can you just articulate, when you’re talking out there with clients, how you see Cognizant, like, really uniquely differentiated in the market when you’re – with what you’re hearing back from them, what you’re hearing from associates, etcetera?

Thank you, Lisa. I’ve met more than 100 clients in my first 100 days across all geographies, and traveled extensively to meet them and my associates. I would say, just to keep the high-level observations, I think our clients love the confluence of technology and industry demand which Cognizant really comes with. Cognizant, if you go back to the history of Cognizant, it was bought at a time when there was a tail end of the ride to cable, and it was born to be application outsourcing wave, which was starting off. And Cognizant built the capability on a confluence of industry and domain. And industry and domain, the confluence is very important now than ever before because we all know that we are living in a golden era of technology where the core of every business in every industry is transitioning to a technology-led core or a technology must core. So I would say we have to progressively make sure that the confluence of technology and industry, we actually demonstrate the differentiation in every industry we represent. Our biggest exposure is healthcare, life sciences, financial services, which is where I think we have really doubled down on this confluence and we now have to progressively build in every other industry. The second piece, I would say, is client centricity. I think over the years, Cognizant’s growth has actually come from mining accounts with the breadth of capability Cognizant brings. And of course, the entrepreneur spirit of our teams. These are the three things which stood out for me. And in fact, some clients actually who have worked with us for very long, actually said we are fans of Cognizant. I mentioned that on my initial remarks. And that was – that really stuck to me that these are clients who want us to move with them, who want us to challenge them and to want us to co-create along with them for their technology future, if – in – So there can never be a better time for the confluence of technology and industry, and I think we are so well positioned for that.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Bryan Bergin with TD Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you. My first one is a margin, and I guess, a NextGen program clarification. And sorry if I missed this, but can you give us a sense of what the run rate cost reduction or the net savings you expect to achieve by the end of 2024? And I’m trying to understand if the 20 to 40 bps of ‘24 operating margin is incremental to what you would normally had planned for? Or if that’s kind of the total level of operating margin expansion, which would align with prior targets?

Yes, Bryan, there is many moving parts here. So let me talk first about the overall program of $400 million of restructuring charges, of which $200 million comes from severance and $200 million comes from real estate. We provided really only an expected run rate savings rate to materialize in ‘25 at the full range of $100 million for the real estate component. We offer that savings opportunity because we feel it’s hard from the outside to calculate of how restructuring charges in the real estate space translate actually into full run rate savings. So that’s kind of we wanted to help you with the impact of the $200 million component for real estate with that. A portion of that, a meaningful portion of that will be achieved in ‘24 and then the full run rate in ‘25. On the severance, we haven’t given you a net impact or a gross impact. Number one, I think you can fairly easily calculate by the number of employees affected in the severance volume that we anticipate and make an assumption about the cost savings that we would see. There are many factors, and you’d see this reflected in a relatively wide range of margin that we gave for the year is wage inflation there is an uncertain pricing environment and other things that we will have to manage through. So we haven’t given more detail about the $200 million severance charge at this point in time. For ‘24, the 20 to 40 basis points of margin expansion would be off the exit rate in ‘23, and that would be our current outlook to ‘24. It should signal from our point of view, our confidence that the full run rate of this program will help us to not only offset large deal pressure that we’re going to see for this first year business cases of the larger deals plus the wage inflation or other elements for ‘24. So it’s a little unusual that we give that early in expectation on the margin. But we felt, given that the program is fairly sizable and only a portion it is going to be realized in ‘23, it will be helpful for you to know that we are confident about return to margin expansion in ‘24.

Just adding one additional thing out here. I think these are two structural shifts in our cost as well. We listed costs in a hybrid environment as well as the structural shift in our personnel cost, which is a part of our SG&A., I think is an important part of this program, it’s a structural shift.

Yes, we – we should mention that we did, I think, in our script that we are focusing on non-billable and corporate functions. So these are intended to actually lower our SG&A rate basically.

Okay. Okay. I appreciate that. That’s helpful. And then a follow-up, Ravi, on the large deal front, I guess, maybe the sales force. Can you talk about what you’re doing specifically in these large deal pursuits and maybe your initial assessment of the sales force and the semi structure, I am curious what you may have put in place here early on in 1Q to give you some quick wins?

Yes. So we’re very excited about the large deal momentum. This is initial momentum based on the bookings this quarter as well as a good pipeline. I would say there are two swim lanes to this. One is a swim lane on transformation deals, which I think, in some ways, now a little slowdown with the current economics environment. There is a second swim lane on cost takeout, cost takeout, specifically in industries, which went through a higher growth rate in the last few years, but are starting to go back to the post pre-pandemic growth rates. They are starting to see that there is significant opportunity to take out cost, and they are using vendor consolidation or cost takeout as a way to construct a large deal. I see more of them now. And I would say both the simulants are equally important as the economy takes an upturn, you’re going to see more transformational digital work coming the other way. So I would really say both – these are the two big categories of large deals. And the industries where we see more of it are the ones where there was a swing of growth during the upswing – forward trajectory of growth in the last few years where that growth has started to taper down. The timing wise, also the labor market is a little soft end. So this is a good time for all our clients to start to get efficiencies and cost takeout and use a partner like Cognizant to support it. So we see more of them now than before. And of course, it’s also reflective that our clients have the confidence to – for us to execute to those deals.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ashwin Shirvaikar with Citi. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, Ashwin, you may be on mute.

Hey, I am sorry. I didn’t recognize it was my name being called, sorry. Hi, Ravi. Hi, Jan. Good to hear from you. Clearly, you guys have both been very busy. I appreciate the well thought-out commentary. I guess I wanted to ask, first, about the cadence that you expect. Obviously, you’ve given Q2 outlook. Is there more of a ratable improvement from that rate to get to the full year? Or is it more of a – I don’t want to call it a 4Q hockey stick, but is it a sharper improvement to the positive for 4Q? And then a similar question on margins, if you can talk about cadence.

Yes. I mean you see our revenue guidance for the second quarter is largely in line with our revenue guidance in the first quarter. And so we do not anticipate a really material contribution of the large deals that we signed until the third and fourth quarter of this year. So we do anticipate revenue growth acceleration throughout the fiscal year throughout the quarters. And I think we’re giving you a fair revenue guidance for the second quarter. We did still see basically pressure on some discretionary projects and smaller deals, as I mentioned in in my comments before. So I think the revenue guidance is kind of where we really solidly think we’re going to be at. The margin guidance is a very important question, Ashwin. Keep in mind, we do implement for the vast majority. We have implemented in April a merit increase. And the second quarter will, therefore, be different from our historic profile of margin that we have shown in the past year. So our second quarter, I think, warrants a good look of what happens when we implement that merit increase, which happened historically in our fourth quarter. And so think of it as a normal merit increase and the margin pressure that we will get from it. And that’s going to be some material impact for us in the second quarter. << And so think of it as a normal merit increase and the margin pressure that we will get from it. And that’s going to be some material impact for us in the second quarter. That’s why I am mentioning it. And if you do the math of our comparable merit increase in the fourth quarter and exclude the one-time components of the fourth quarter that we had, you will see that in the fourth quarter, we recorded about 100 basis points impact of that merit increase on our margins. And fair to assume that things wouldn’t be that different in the second quarter, may be actually probably slightly a little bit more pressure because the economy is changing a little bit. But that’s kind of the framework. That’s why I want to point that out, so. And then the people action of our NextGen program, we are going to start to execute in the second quarter, but given of how we are going to be executing, of course third quarter and the fourth quarter will be reflecting the impact of a big portion of them – good portion of that program.

And Ashwin, if you – just to jog your memory on this, we actually did one in October, a merit cycle, and we are doing one more in April. So, these are two merit cycles. In fact, three merit cycles in 18 months. It’s good for our associates. It starts to reflect on our attrition numbers starting to drop. And you have already seen that it’s an investment for the future, but it equally has pressure on our margins.

Understood. I guess the first part of that question was on revenue cadence, if you could address that. But then I also want to ask you, your headcount did go down sequentially. When do you expect that to stabilize and start to grow, I guess in anticipation of revenue growth in the future? And what part do you think increased automation? Applying AI to yourselves might play as you think of headcount in the future?

Ashwin, that’s a great question actually. One of the things, as I mentioned my priorities is to get commercial momentum, large deals, reduce our attrition and be an employer of choice. The third piece I spoke about is simplification of our operations. The NextGen program is an important program to de-layer our organization and to simplify our operations. Equally, one of the things we want to bring a huge cadence on, I think in the last 12 months or so, we had some – we had a very good initiative around pricing in the market. And that’s a way to actually keep your margins intact. One of the focus areas for me moving forward is increased utilization, higher off-shoring, better pyramid ratios, better leverage of Gen C program. And the fourth is what you just mentioned, which is embrace of automation in everything we do. In fact, just a few weeks ago, I launched a platform called Neuro IT Operations where we want to go relentless on a client automation to ourselves, both on technology as well as IT operations and of course, on the process side. So, we do think this is going to be a little bit of a structural shift in the way we see our operating model, where we look at an uplift of margins, not just through pricing, but also through operational efficiencies and the leverage of automation. Automation is a moving scale. When everybody moves on that scale, you then start to share those benefits with your clients. And when you start to share those benefits with your clients, you have to re-innovate so that you can actually be ahead of the curve and keep it for yourself. So, it’s kind of a cycle you have to keep working on. And when everybody – when you start to share it with your clients, when there is a new baseline, you have to re-baseline it with more innovation. So, I would say we are now – we have got into that rhythm. So, we are very excited about how we could be competitive to our deals, which we are starting to see and how we could also on the downstream price deals to win and deliver them to margins using automation as a lever. So, it’s an important shift in the way we are seeing our operating model. And it’s an evolving scale because of the fact that technology in that space is evolving so fast, including the leverage of generative AI to increase developer productivity, which is the new thing we are working on.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Surinder Thind with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Following up on the last question, Ravi, can you maybe talk about the level of productivity gains in terms of potentially automation and the level of disruption here? And what I am getting to here is, is there the potential for a step function change? And if there is a step function change, how does that impact the revenue model as you look over the long-term, right? I assume you won’t be able to generate the same level of revenues for a given level of service.

It’s an interesting question because it all depends on how much you want to leverage the productivity you generate out of these tools and instrumentation and platforms into your deals and use that to win more and share it with your clients. And how much you could actually constantly innovate beyond the time when you start to win the deals to when you start to execute the deals. So, it’s a very difficult one because it’s a moving scale because nobody spoke about generative AI in 2022. Everybody is speaking about it because just the scale at which it’s come to disrupt various businesses in the world, including ours, right. So, I would say it’s a hard one to put a quantifiable impact on revenue and on margins. It is a moving scale. We have to be constantly ahead of the curve. And again, constantly ahead of the curve not to execute programs, but also equally to win business because these are the same productivity baselines we actually take it to our proposals. So, sometimes, we wonder as the baselines constantly change whether it will translate that back to your bottom line, or it will translate that back to better win ratio. So, you have to keep that balance so that you have growth. And equally, you are able to generate that growth in a profitable way by not just leveraging the traditional levers of higher utilization, higher off-shoring, better roll mix, but also using technology as a lever to do this. So, I know I have given you a high-level answer, but it’s very hard to simulate and put a revenue model attached to it because it is just such a fast moving curve. I actually think we are well equipped to capitalize on the advances in the space and we are well equipped to generate the value for our clients, and we are well equipped to actually evolve our business model, which is potentially going to go from people to a people-plus-machines model, if I may, or a people-plus-AI or AI-amplified-human model, which I have been very fascinated about.

Thank you. That’s it for me.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Yes. Hi. I just had a question on the overall IT services environment. Just thinking in your conversations you had with the 100 or so clients, Ravi. Are people expecting the environment to stay similar in their IT spending budgets, or do you think people will put further pressure on budgets and IT spend as we go forward through this year?

Yes. It’s a great question, actually. I will kind of pivot this in a little different direction. If you are working on traditional technologies or classical technologies, as I call it, which is enabling a business, the pressure on IT budgets is going to be very high because a lot of it is cost driven. If you are building a CRM system, if you are building an HR system, a supply chain system. I think the pressure of IT budgets with the economic uncertainty is going to be very – it’s going to be tight. That’s how I see it. If you are leveraging technology to disrupt the core of a business, as an example, if you are doing the connected car initiative of an automotive company, I don’t think budgets will come on the way because it’s a disruption of the business model. Equally, the capability you need is going to be deep as well, which means you have to build different swim lanes in your operating model so that you could cater to classical technologies on one side, but equally cater to deep expertise needed for disrupting the core of businesses. This is a swim lane which did not exist before because most businesses enable the businesses using technology, now, technologies emerged into businesses, which I think will have more flexibility on budgets because the paranoia about the core changing means you could become irrelevant if you don’t make the change, and therefore, you allocate more for securing your future as a business. Some industries are doing it more paranoid because there is more change in the core products and services, and some are actually not as worried about this issue. I would say, depending on where you are, this would – you would find IT budgets to…

Okay. Great. Yes. Thanks for the color.

Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back over to management for closing comments.

Great. Thank you everyone for joining. We look forward to catching up with you next quarter.

This concludes today’s Cognizant Technology Solutions first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. You may disconnect now.