Arkadiy Dobkin
Analyst · Cowen
Thank you and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I am very pleased to report that our second quarter, excluding any impacts from GGA acquisition proved to be another strong quarter for EPAM exceeding both guidance and consensus. Our second-quarter revenue was $174.7 million, a sequential increase of 9% and 31% year over year. Included in this figure is $2.4 million from the GGA acquisition that was not in our guidance. Non-GAAP net income was up almost 34% year over year and non-GAAP operating margin was in the range of 16.5%. Anthony will review the quarterly results in more details a bit later and provide you our guidance for Q3 and for the full year. At this point I would like to bring additional highlights on several important topics to continue explaining EPAM's overall challenges and opportunities in the market we serve and in the markets we operate. It will include the story around the latest CMO-CIO study we just released, some details on the GGA acquisition and an update on the Ukraine and Russian situation. During the last couple of calls we spent some time talking about EPAM's history and our strong software product engineering [inaudible]. We also touched on our [inaudible] evolution to solution provider to service a very fast developing subset of [inaudible] global market which consists in its majority from the companies never considered themselves as traditional software enterprises. At the same time during the recent year those companies were forced to change and to change very fast because their business model and their primary brands were starting to be impacted very rapidly by software. As a result they have been in search of very different technology providers capable in helping them to compete in the new software dependency areas. We also talked about the challenging set of hybrid skills needed to successfully serve that market and about specific reasons why EPAM might be one of the best to fill such needs. Finally, during our last call we [inaudible] with Forrester, a leading independent research analyst firm. Recognize EPAM is a leader in the emerging market, they named as a software for the development services 40 years. Forrester also identified several key vertical industries [inaudible] to their majority of such services. Those key industries include financial services, information services, detail [inaudible] and media and entertainment. For many years in the past our work put us in front of technologies, the CTOs and CIOs of the companies, very similar to who we dealt with when working with their independent software programmers. Now with a key focus on the verticals mentioned above the conversation as shifted to include the business and market insight of these enterprises. We are now talking to the CMOs and business leads in addition to the CIOs to understand both worlds better and to help them in developing their digital product strategy. At the same time, however, the responsibility for digital product development is not always clear and brings new challenges that we need to address to be successful. So EPAM decided to partner with CIO magazine and the CMO cloud to conduct a study looking deeper into CIO and CMO relationships and how companies are handling their only channel presence and digital strategy. The study was published just last week and surveyed over 400 CMOs and CIOs. It is available for download from our website and we encourage you to get a copy. So let me take you over some key points. First, the study showed that the reason this communication between CIO and CMO – digital product platform [inaudible] and only channel all have different meanings depending on if you speak with a CIO or CMO. This breakdown or miscommunication makes it very difficult to move forward with an aggressive digital strategy. The second key point was a technology finding is creating attack of war between the CIO and CMO. Even as their overall technology budgets have broadened, the allocation of the spend is shifting. Markets and budgets are becoming more linked to technology. Cloud-based digital marketing software, customer analytics and social media technologies to name a few force the CMO to involve the CIO on more market oriented projects. The third key point is that mobile has become the absolute flashpoint for [inaudible] channel. The study found that both CIO and CMO are using sales with all new the mobile strategy. While it sounds good, it can quickly become a negative if they don't have a collaborative approach. This brings us back to the first key point, and again highlighting the importance of vertical coordination between these 2 critical roles. The [inaudible] become more challenging. This in turn makes it even more difficult to succeed for suppliers that are not prepared to deal with it. After all, CMO has [inaudible] working with agency as well as CIO focus has been the system integrator traditionally. These are 2 different worlds. So to deal with that a new breed of partners should emerge who can breach this relationship and can help companies with their digital strategy that heavily depend on the disruptive technologies and new operational models to be delivered properly. Interesting to note that the same [inaudible] problem becoming the critical issue within vendor's multi-functional organizations. This actually multiplies the challenges for providers that have to deal not only with external but also with internal complications. What does this mean for EPAM and other providers? In short many providers struggle to find the right balance for digital customer centric product oriented strategy to execute today. That is exactly the challenge to overcome and the opportunity to [inaudible] for EPAM. To do so we are focused on leveraging our software for the development capabilities and as seamlessly as possible merging it with digital and specific vertical expertise as it was highlighted in the Forrester [inaudible]. That also explains the key focus area for our investments to bring the necessary [inaudible], both by our organic and not organic efforts. Finally, to better align these mentioned efforts, we are in the middle of a project to evolve our brand so that it reflects the significant growth in both breadth and depth of our capabilities. And our readiness to help these companies to bring to life their long-term digital service. GGA – it drew the close third acquisition this year of GGA. GGA is a US-based provider of scientific informatics services to global pharmaceutical, scientific instrumentation, medical device, scientific publishing and software and early-stage life science companies. The acquisition has a lot of potential by combining EPAM's more traditional software development capabilities with GGA's algorithmic development, mathematical modeling and sophisticated content database development capabilities. While initially the focus will be to develop this into Life Sciences solutions practice within EPAM the acquired capabilities could have broader application across our [inaudible]. GGA brings us over 500 employees, most in St. Petersburg, Russia, with over 20 people in US and Western Europe. Their client base includes 8 of the top 10 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. This acquisition is right in line with our strategy of bringing on capabilities that help us to penetrate new verticals and to develop new [inaudible]. We believe that Life Sciences is among the industries which are disrupted by the same trends as industries we talked before. Therefore it is opening some potential for us to combine the power of GGA, their main expertise with existing EPAM capabilities and to grow this vertical into significant business over the next several years. Finally, before I turn it over to Anthony for the financial review let me update you on the Ukraine and Russia – Russian sanction situation. All EPAM locations continue to operate normally today. [inaudible] report over the past several months doesn't show any deviation from normal attendance rate in the offices in the region. Additionally, non-Ukrainian engagement in EPAM delivery [inaudible] in other countries were impacted. Neither EPAM nor any of EPAM clients have initiated disaster recovery or started to execute business continue to program steps. It is worth noting that majority of large client engagements are delivered from multiple locations and therefore have limited exposure to Ukraine. In those cases where a team's assembled source from Ukraine steps were taken to increase readiness for relocation should situation deteriorate significantly. EPAM hired over 400 IT professionals in the first 7 months of 2014 in Ukraine. This reflects our commitment [inaudible] from the vast majority of clients and staff. Additionally, EPAM brought over 100 university graduates into training and dozens of non-billable administrative and support staff. Sanctions against Russian government and government control interest don't affect EPAM. Extended sanctions target Russian government and government controlled interest and don't concern EPAM as a US-based Company. Russian activity in Western Ukraine has not disrupted EPAM's operations. EPAM has 2 offices in the east of the country Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk. Most of the associates are over 100 miles away and have no experience in any disruption. The situation in Eastern Ukraine continues to change on a daily basis and EPAM continues to monitor it closely. Ukraine mobilization doesn't have material impact on EPAM. Ukraine has and always had compulsory military service. This means that a good fraction of young men need to go through military training or service unless they are not eligible for health, family or work-related reasons. Daily report on attendance mentioned above includes absence due to participation in this type of activities and, as mentioned above, doesn't show deviation from historical averages. Need to separate real versus perceived risks. Given EPAM locations and the information shared, we are in position as of today of dealing with perceived risk. And this is what we explain to our customers on a regular basis. As you can see from our financial results and the facts we have shared, we have not felt any significant impact from the crisis and don't have real risk assuming the situation doesn't escalate. Now I will turn it over to Anthony to review the quarter in more details.