Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 2019 Fourth Quarter and Year-end Genpact Limited Earnings Conference Call. My name is Gigi, and I will be your conference moderator for today. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. The replay of the call will be archived and made available on the IR section of Genpact's website. I would now like to turn the call over to Roger Sachs, Head of Investor Relations at Genpact. Please proceed, sir.

Thank you, Gigi, and good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to Genpact's fourth quarter earnings call to discuss our results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2019. We hope you had a chance to review our earnings release, which was posted to the IR section of our website, genpact.com. With me in New York today are Tiger Tyagarajan, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Ed Fitzpatrick, our Chief Financial Officer. Our agenda for today will be as follows: Tiger will provide a high-level overview of our results and update you on our strategic initiatives. Ed will then discuss our financial performance in greater detail and provide our outlook for 2020. Tiger will then come back with some closing comments, and then we will take your questions. And as Gigi just mentioned, we expect our call to last roughly an hour. Some of the matters we will discuss in today's call are forward-looking. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties are set forth in our press release. In addition, during our call today, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. We believe these non-GAAP measures provide additional information to enhance the understanding of the way management views the operating performance of our business. You can find a reconciliation of these measures to GAAP in today's earnings release posted to the IR section of our website. And with that, let me turn the call over to Tiger.

Thank you, Roger. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our 2019 Fourth Quarter and Year-end Earnings Call. Outstanding execution and continued transformation services wins capped off one of our best revenue growth years ever. This translated into a healthy adjusted EPS and operating cash flow growth for 2019. These metrics were all above the high end of our expectations. Clients' desire for transformational change is accelerating, expanding our addressable market and providing greater opportunities for us to drive profitable long-term growth. We continue to improve the rigor and agility of our portfolio evaluation process, allowing us to quickly reallocate investment and talent resources to best penetrate high-growth areas. Here are our full year 2019 results on a constant currency basis. Total revenue increased 18%, Global Client revenue increased 12% and Global Client BPO revenue increased 14%. We also delivered adjusted operating income margin of 15.9%, up 10 basis points; and adjusted EPS of $2.05, up 14%. During 2019, we were increasingly recognized by our clients and industry analysts as a preferred partner to drive transformational change. By leveraging disruptive digital technologies and real-time predictive insights, we are reimagining the way work gets done to solve critical business problems for our clients. With the relentless pace of technological innovation, as well as competitive, macroeconomic and geopolitical pressures, corporate leaders must accelerate their decision-making process and make bold decisions based on insights derived from analytics. We believe our culture of driving change to meet these heightened expectations from the C-suite and Boards is a huge differentiator in the market and is one of the reasons we win. During 2019, we drove Global Client growth across our chosen verticals led by growth of more than 30% in Transformation Services. Our consulting, digital and analytics Transformation Services, rooted in…

Thank you, Tiger, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, I will review our full year results in detail then briefly touch upon some highlights of our fourth quarter performance as well as provide our financial outlook for 2020. Let me begin with a review of our full year 2019 results. Total revenue was $3.52 billion, up 17% year-over-year or 18% on a constant currency basis. Total growth was greater than expected with Transformation Services leading the way. Total BPO revenue, which represents approximately 84% of total revenue, increased 19% year-over-year; and total IT services revenue was up 10% year-over-year. Global Client revenue, which represented approximately 86% of total revenue, increased 11% year-over-year or 12% on a constant currency basis, at the high end of our expected range. Within Global Clients, BPO revenue increased 13% year-over-year or 14% on a constant currency basis, led by growth in Transformation Services, up more than 30%; while IT Services revenue increased 3%. During the year, as we become a bigger transformation partner for an increasing number of Global Clients, we have meaningfully expanded the size of a number of our client relationships. During 2019, we increased the number of our Global Clients with annual revenues over $15 million to 49 from 45. This included clients with more than $25 million in annual revenue, growing to 25 from 21. GE revenue increased 78% year-over-year, above our expectations, largely due to incremental scope added during the year related to the large deal we signed late in 2018. Adjusted income from operations grew 18% year-over-year to $559 million. Recall that we had assumed approximately $22 million at the beginning of the year related to the India export subsidy in our adjusted operating income outlook. As it became clearer throughout the year that we would only receive approximately $4…

Thank you, Ed. We saw terrific momentum in our business in 2019 driven by disciplined strategic choices and strong execution. Our investments in our service lines, along with the successful integration of our acquisitions, particularly in digital and analytics, has positioned us well for a multiyear growth trajectory. Our large deals with iconic brands has solidified our reputation as a transformation partner of choice, leading to higher levels of inbound activity beyond our traditional buying centers. As we enter 2020, we are seeing the experience economy rewrite the rules of digital transformation. We are extremely excited about how we have bolstered our capabilities in this area through the acquisition of Rightpoint on the heels of the addition of the TandemSeven a few years back. We have also been able to leverage our automation to AI platform Genpact Cora in many of our engagements and solutions, and we see it being a huge differentiator. Cora allows us to bring more standardized, repeatable offerings to the market. Clients increasingly need predictive insights to make more informed decisions. With the acceleration of the digitization of data and the maturation of data management, our opportunity in analytics has expanded dramatically. We saw terrific growth in analytics in 2019, and we expect this trajectory to continue to be a key driver of Transformation Services growth going forward. As noted earlier, we will continue to be maniacally focused on reallocating investment and talent resources to high-growth areas, and we'll continue to be thoughtful in our choices. In summary, we have a growing top line primarily made up of sticky long-term global relationships with inherent operating leverage driving long-term margin expansion and the ability to tap our cash flows and balance sheet to take advantage of opportunities in our underpenetrated market. We have the right leadership team and talent base to go after this. I'm pleased with our 2020 outlook which is very much aligned with our long-term growth and profitability goals.

Thank you, Tiger. We'd now like to open up the call to your questions. Gigi, can you please provide the instructions?

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question comes from the line of Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi.

Good quarter. Yes. So what I was hoping for was maybe a bridge to connect your 2019 performance to 2020 expectations on a revenue basis. I get the 250 basis point contribution from Rightpoint, but total contribution from acquisitions, the GE delta, how we think about that? How much is existing client growth versus new client ramp? And I might have missed the FX comment you had.

So let me take that, Ashwin, to begin with, and Ed will add to that. I'll start with GE. GE, as I mentioned and I think Ed added, will be broadly flat as we look at '20 versus '19, which is kind of the way we thought about GE for many years until various changes happen. So that's one way to think about GE, and then that leads to Global Clients. If you back off the 250 basis points driven by acquisitions, which is about 100 basis points more than '19, then really you're talking about a Global Client growth that is just a little bit above in 2020 versus 2019, which is a great position to be in. And that -- the confidence of that is driven by, obviously, the pipeline, the wins we've had which we continue to execute on. I'd also say that all the execution during the year of the various large, complex deals that we won have gone really well. And it's important to call that out because that sets the stage for continued growth, both in those relationships as well as what it does to other relationships as far as reputation is concerned. And on FX?

And on FX, really expecting no rate right now. The as reported and constant currency is consistent, so it's kind of a small difference, so no change. If anything changes during the year, we'll update you.

Yes. And maybe the final wrapper to that -- to both our comments would be visibility to revenue kind of very similar as we look at 2020 as it was at the beginning of 2019.

Got it. That's very helpful. And then the second question, just drilling down on Rightpoint, obviously a good-sized acquisition. How much was the 4Q contribution, first of all, I guess? And then any thoughts on what the core margins are versus integration costs in terms of margin impact? Any early views on what clients have said? One pushback I do get from investors is people try to compare Rightpoint to Headstrong from years ago and not necessarily a fair comparison, but I want to hear your viewpoint.

Yes. I'll start with the last one because that's the easiest one. That is a completely disconnected comparison. There is no comparison at all, not even remotely. Rightpoint is a business that is focused on improving consumer experience for B2C companies, business-to-business experience for business-to-business companies and user experience in large employee bases of large enterprises. It's multi-vertical. It's working with clients to drive change from design strategy to digital execution to bring that strategy to life. And then when you combine that with our capabilities that came to us through TandemSeven and then our capabilities on process innovation, that's where we are already beginning, as I said, to see real great conversations with our existing clients and actually interesting conversations with Rightpoint's own client base. So that one is the easy one. Contribution to fourth quarter is about 150 basis points in the fourth quarter.

Yes, 1% to 1.5%. Yes, 1% to 1.5%.

1% to 1.5%, 100 to 150 basis points of contribution to revenue. Margin, broadly similar to our margin at the operating margin level.

Well, I think with the integration expenses, it was a bit more dilutive. So all in, with the integration expenses, it probably caused pressure to the extent of about 15 basis points in total for the fourth quarter. As we get into next year, the impact is lesser, but it will be below company average next year because we'll continue to do the integration that we're supposed to do, right? So -- but overall, we're managing that in the 16% operating margin guidance that we gave.

Our next question comes from the line of Dave Koning from Baird.

Yes, and nice year.

Thank you, Dave. Thank you.

Yes. And I guess -- so first of all, just one more thing on Rightpoint. So it seems like, based on where you were in Q4 and then the way you guided 2020, it's probably in the ballpark of a $90 million-or-so run rate. How do you see that growing over the next couple of years between cross-selling different products to the Genpact organization and vice versa? Like is that something that might grow well faster, like 25% or something?

So, Dave, actually, your zip code is pretty good. I would say the starting point of the zip code is right. The math is right. And one would think about Rightpoint in the same way one thinks about Transformation Services. It is new digital skills. It's new age skills. It's consulting. It's experience. Therefore, it should lead company growth, for sure, and it should get closer to the Transformation Services type of growth. That would be our expectation, combination of their capabilities brought into our client base and our capabilities taken into their client base.

Okay, great. And then just a couple of quick modeling ones. Typically, from Q4 to Q1, you fall off $40 million, $50 million or so. This quarter -- this Q1, I would assume it's going to be a little less than that, just because the incremental Rightpoint acquisition. So is it more like a $30 million, $40 million falloff sequentially? And then interest expense is the other one.

As we look at it, we're still somewhere in the range of 2.5% to 3.5% is kind of what we've seen. I wouldn't model different than that. I'd say 2.5% to 3.5% is about the right range, David. It will help a bit, but just -- I would stick to that range, sequential decline, yes.

Yes. We've seen that now for historically so many years, Dave, that it's a good way to model the business.

Our next question comes from the line of Joseph Foresi from Cantor Fitzgerald.

This is Steven Chang coming on for Joe. So just maybe more of just any more color on Rightpoint. I'm just wondering, if possible, maybe you could quantify how much of that digital revenue growth you saw was due to integrating Rightpoint as you've seen so far and maybe how you look on that like moving forward.

Can you repeat? Yes, I didn't get the -- did you get it?

Yes. So if the question was how much of what we've seen so far in digital growth is because of Rightpoint, I would say by the time we close the Rightpoint acquisition, we were well into the middle of the fourth quarter. So I wouldn't say a lot of the growth of the fourth quarter came from the capabilities that came into the company through Rightpoint. However, if the question is a broader question around how much is experience and how much have you seen experience being important for digital growth in the last couple of years, the answer is quite a lot. And the importance of that is one of the reasons that gave us the confidence to go forward and bring Rightpoint in. That confidence was built with the TandemSeven team, and that team has been with us now for more than two years. And we see that -- we saw that play out in banking. We saw that play out in insurance, and we started seeing that play out in a number of other verticals. That's the confidence that we have with Rightpoint as we look at 2020 and beyond.

Okay, great. That's helpful. And just one more follow-up. Moving on to kind of your -- the pipeline on larger deals. Are you -- do you see any slowdown in the future? Are you expecting inflows to kind of continue at the same rate? And maybe if you could provide some color on these deals in specific verticals or any clients, especially if you could touch on maybe digital, please.

I would say we haven't seen any change in the behavior of clients. We haven't seen any change in inflows, pipeline and closure, which is bookings, as we've gone through the year. The only thing I would call out as a question mark is the recent events around coronavirus and what does that mean. We haven't seen anything so far, but I think it's prudent for us to think about if that kind of epidemic continues to play out in a certain way, then what does that mean to global travel? What does that mean to clients' ability to travel? And what does that do to decision-making? We just want to be watchful and cautious. And obviously, we are in discussion with clients. We haven't seen anything so far.

Our next question comes from the line of Tien-Tsin Huang from JPMorgan.

Yes. This is Puneet sitting in for Tien-Tsin. So 2019 clearly was a banner year for you in terms of ramping up multiple large deals. As we look forward and your growth begin to normalize, why is gross margins not expected to expand by more than impairment benefit of 50 basis points as some of those deals ramp up? Or is that too early, and that's more of a long-term lever for gross margin expansion?

Yes. I think as I said in my prepared remarks, we believe that the margins have stabilized. But as you heard Tiger say, too, the pipeline is still pretty robust. And the level of large deals in the pipeline have not decreased, right? So we're pleased with that level. And to the extent that we do more large deals, kind of if margins stay in and around this range, we'll all be very happy because we'll be able to drive through incremental operating margin as well as income and free cash flow, right? So our view is to the extent that the services that we provide for our clients provide higher value, absolutely, we should see appreciation in gross margins. For right now, our view is stable. Seems like the right place to be given the pipeline and the extent of large deals that are there. So for now, we're -- we think it's reasonable to assume flat. And as we make progress on that, we'll update it.

Yes. And Puneet, two other things to add to what I just said. If you go back to the commentary on Global Client growth, after you remove the impact of Rightpoint, Global Client growth is actually just a tad bit better in 2020 versus 2019, which means the ramps continue. And we're going to -- based on our pipeline and inflows, we will have more deals that come in that need to continue to ramp. And our deals, as you know, take time to ramp. So therefore, I think we would not be able to use that ramp to get the steady-state gross margin in year 2020 itself. Obviously, over time, that should play itself through. The second one is on Transformation Services, particularly if you peel off into digital, most commentary from most peer group companies will tell you that digital takes time to deliver on margins as you scale. And that scaling effort is not a single or 2-year effort, it's a multiyear effort. And we are still in that journey of scaling. So I think if you put those two together, longer-term margin trajectory should be positive. I don't think we expect to see that in 2020.

Yes. Puneet, as you've seen us manage, too, we're really looking at driving EPS growth, driving free cash flow growth for the value of the firm. To drive the value of the firm, we do that by driving operating margin, right? So the operating margin is where we've been so maniacally focused as well and making sure we're currently improving. You'll see some geography where maybe gross -- we might make a call, I think, gross margin will be a bit lower on the deal. But if we're able to drive operating margins up, we'll take that. We'll take that every day. And in fact, you heard us talk about a lot of what we've done in some of these gross margins being lower, the onshore skill sets that you heard Tiger talk about that we're more than happy to do. It's effectively building out new service lines, if you will, where we'd be developing that in our R&D line, right? So these are calls that we've made consciously and strategically, and we're happy with them.

Yes, absolutely.

Got it. And Ed, can you also talk about potential impact from the recent India budget on your tax rate and subsidies or any other line item in operations? And will that also impact, in any way, your ability to move cash in or out of India?

Sure. A couple -- there's a few different things happening. Some just recently announced some kind of a little bit -- announced a little bit earlier. The first one is the tax rate that India has announced in the elections that companies are able to take going forward with the reduction of the overall corporate tax rate is somewhere in the mid-30s to mid-20%, 25% range or thereabouts. That was one of the reasons why you saw actually our tax rate increase this year because we had to revalue our deferred tax assets at that lower rate, so the tax increase that you saw happen a little bit higher than what we expected even in the quarter was due to the revaluation of those deferred tax assets at that lower tax rate. So a good thing for the company to stem tax increases going forward, for us, actually led to a bit of a write-down of the assets, which seems counterintuitive, but it makes sense. On the other tax provision that talks about dividends-related tax and being able to get cash allowed the cash to be more fungible. That's certainly a positive. At least, it gives more flexibility or less -- you're penalized less if you want to take cash out of the jurisdiction potentially. So that's a potential positive, but we've been able to manage that without much impact over the years, but it's certainly another potential positive in terms of flexibility it gives us.

And that's -- as you know, that's still on the table to be passed by Parliament, if I remember right. So we'll have to wait and see ultimately what happens, but it gives us more flexibility if that's the way it turns out.

That's right.

Our next question comes from the line of Maggie Nolan from William Blair.

So you've obviously still got some flexibility in the balance sheet to do some acquisitions in 2020, but you're already coming into the year with a pretty decent inorganic contribution. So I'm just wondering can you update us on your appetite for M&A in the coming year and what you're looking for.

Yes. So I'll start it off, and Ed can add. Our appetite, Maggie, has never been driven by how much growth contribution it would have or should have. We've always driven our M&A from our strategic choices, and we still have a set of strategic choices where we would love to find the right target to bring in, just as we've done over the last 4 to 5 years around certain specific digital capabilities, analytics capabilities, certain domain capabilities across the various geographies. So we do have a pretty good M&A pipeline. As you know, a number of those, while they are in the pipeline, never ultimately get done because of a variety of reasons, including, in our business, a match of cultures and so on. So I wouldn't necessarily say that our M&A decisions are based on what contribution to growth do we expect from acquisitions. We have the firepower available to do the right acquisition if we find one, and our M&A team continues to look for the right ones and engage in those conversations? Ed?

Yes. That's a good point. I'd just add 2 other things. We're at 1.7 net debt to EBITDA, so feel pretty good about our flexibility do more, as we see appropriate. But again, it's all based upon what we think makes sense not for growth. Because it's been around 1% to 1.5%. Rightpoint was bigger, right? We said it's about 2.5%, and it was bigger. But also, kind of I was happy to do it because it was probably one of the more profitable companies that we've acquired, right? They're coming in with largely aligned operating margin. They could be a little bit lower in the first couple of years because of the integration-related expenses, but we love the product. We love the profit margins they're driving. So at the end of the day, the EPS impact of this business is going to be accretive, $0.02, $0.03. And we love that, right? And that will grow over time. So that one was bigger, and we kind of like the fact that it was bigger.

Okay, great. And then you had a strong quarter in Q4. Clearly, the core BPM business is doing well. It did have slightly weaker performance out of Global Client IT. So I'm just wondering if there are any dynamics there that we should be keeping an eye on and what your expectation is for both Global Client IT and GE IT in 2020 and any kind of quarterly considerations there, too.

So I'll address the GE IT one very quickly, Maggie. Overall, we are assuming, as I said, flat GE. Specifically within that, IT, et cetera is dependent so much on GE's own budgets to a single client, et cetera. So predicting that in a very specific way is more difficult. I think Global Clients is a better conversation because it's a portfolio. On Global Client IT, over the years, we've talked about making our choices in IT and narrowing them down to the areas where we think we have a real strength in connecting it to our process and domain and industry understanding, and we've been undertaking that journey for many years. As a result of which, we are now back to growth versus having quite a few years where we were declining. As we continue to undertake that journey, we are finding material pieces of our IT business that are getting closer and closer to our digital business. And in fact, the lines of differentiation between those 2 are blurring. So as we go forward, we expect some portions of the IT business to actually start mirroring some of our digital business growth. And as that keeps expanding, the portions of our IT business that are more unconnected to all those will become smaller and smaller and less material and have less material impact on the overall company. And that's already beginning to show itself in the numbers if you look at the numbers today versus five years back. Ed, anything else to add?

I would just say, as a result of this, you've heard me say we're talking about IT separately. It seems unusual because of how this has all been kind of coming together, particularly over the past year or 2. So as we move forward, our plan is to not talk about IT separately given how that has come together. So we'll cover it on this call. But going forward, you shouldn't expect us to cover it. And then, Maggie, to answer your specific question, the fourth quarter, I think part of was a couple of things. We had some larger impacts and a good IT -- or a good comparison year-over-year because we had some fourth quarter, and GE was part of that. So that was part of the year-over-year shrinkage. In the full year, actually, we did -- we had -- some of the large deals had some IT associated with it, and that wound down a bit as we got into the fourth quarter. So just to answer your specific question.

And some capital markets-related, banking-related customers. And you've heard that commentary from most of our peer group. I mean, that, obviously -- to the extent that we have some portion of our business there, that also got impacted.

Our next question is from the line of Justin Donati from Wells Fargo.

I just had one. Can you talk about how many Transformation Service professionals you have and if you're having any issues finding talent?

No. It's an interesting question, Justin. We don't count headcount based on specific number of Transformation Services professionals because that's a combination of people who are deep in a particular industry. Some of them, by the way, come from our operating teams across the globe. And now we have 100-plus operating centers across the globe. Some of them are subject-matter experts in specific services and domain: finance, supply chain, risk, financial crimes and so on. And then a number of them come from our digital teams who are kind of pods of capabilities: AI, machine learning, the experience group. And a number of them sometimes are deep inside our Transformation Services engagement. Think about them as consultants. And other times, they're actually solutioning a very large managed services deal which is not a plain engagement. So we -- I don't think we'll be able to specifically answer the question you're asking, which is headcount in Transformation Services. We don't monitor and manage Transformation Services as a specific separate headcount.

Got it. And then if I could sneak one more in. Are you seeing a greater percentage of revenue coming from transaction and outcome-based work? Are you getting better margins in that area?

So the simple answer to your question is we should and we will. But it takes time, particularly because in those outcome-based contracts, depending on the nature of the contracts, some of them are transaction-based pricing. If it's transaction-based pricing, then we start getting better margins pretty early, particularly as we start driving digital technologies and driving productivity, automation and so on. Some of them are fixed price. And again, as we drive productivity, we should, but that takes some time. And then we have truly outcome-based contracts, where if you drive better -- if you reduce fraud, if you increase revenue, if you improve our on-time fulfillment and supply chain, those take significant time. You've got to hit milestones, so those then don't show up as better margins immediately. They take time to show up.

Our next question comes from the line of Bryan Bergin from Cowen.

I was curious, I wanted to ask, first, consulting and Transformation Services. Can you just give us some color on how you're thinking about managing resource utilization as you move past the year-end, particularly as you're adding this Rightpoint consulting workforce as they come on here in 4Q? Just talk about your confidence in making sure to avoid any potential air pockets on resource utilization as you're moving through the early parts of 2020.

Yes. It's a great -- because I was going to answer that on the last question that Justin was asking, kind of added on. That wasn't exactly aligned with what his question was, but -- because you do remember coming into -- I think it was 2018, we had that -- we kind of got ahead of ourselves in the hiring, and I think I used words that were less than complementary of how we managed it, but I said we're getting after it. And the company has gotten after the meaningful way. I think a lot of brute force as we got through 2018, and we saw those margins improved, and we saw further improvement as we gotten into '19. And we now have the system, I think, largely in place where we're measuring those resources and measuring utilization. And we've improved utilization significantly. That is no longer an issue for us. So now those margins have come up significantly as we expected, and we're continuing to drive utilization metrics and drive those metrics positively up to improve margins. So that is definitely a positive for us as we move forward in terms of our ability to improve margins and utilize those resources, not just utilize them better, but get visibility to the skill sets of the folks we have so we can deploy them on the right jobs at the right time. So that is happening. I would say we've been impressed with how Rightpoint is managing their own resources using a similar system that we've deployed, so we're kind of in lockstep in terms of the way that we're thinking about managing those resources.

Okay. All right. Good. And then just on bookings, how should we translate the $3.9 billion of bookings being comparable to, let's say, in 2018? I heard the GE comments about, obviously, the new work that you had won back in late '18. But otherwise, anything to call out in the nature of bookings, average duration? Any metrics you can share there?

No. Nothing, other than in the prepared remarks, I had said that if you look at 2 years, '16, '17, and compare them to '18, '19. And the reason why 2 years is the way we would look at it is because it becomes very lumpy and episodic whether a booking gets done in the last week of December or the first week of January. And that is really beyond all our control when you're talking about $100 million deal. So to that extent, we prefer to look at in all our modeling, we look at 2-year cohort of bookings. And if you look at that, the previous 2 years, $2.7 billion average; the last 2 years, $4 billion average. Within that $4 billion average, 2018, having a higher proportion of GE than 2019, therefore, by definition, Global Clients being higher in '19 versus '18. All that is good metrics to look at, and that's one of the reasons why our guidance and outlook for 2020 is what it is.

And what we said, Brian, too, is we do think over time that it should align with our overall growth of the firm, right? As we look back, we were looking at it today or yesterday and saw that it was largely aligned with the company. You look past -- you could do your own CAGR, I mean, the past 5 years, it's been in the low double-digit range which kind of aligns with total company growth.

Our next question comes from the line of Mayank Tandon from Needham.

Tiger, just given some of the industry sources, it would suggest that the market is probably the healthiest it's been in a long time, maybe ever. So what are the constraints to growth? In other words, why can't you grow faster? Would just love to hear about what might be limiting your growth potential, just given the health of the market backdrop.

So Mayank, I'll start by saying we love the growths that we have seen, not just in '19, but actually pretty consistently in Global Clients over 4 or 5 years. So -- and the question that you're asking is -- and that Global Client growth, by itself, if you leave the volatility that we've seen over 5, 7 years with GE, has been very, very good. And if you take Global Client BPM, it's been pretty industry-leading. Why can't it be higher? I'll start by saying execution is at the forefront of continuing to drive that growth. Reputation is incredibly important when we build multi-decade relationships. That allows us to drive growth with that relationship, and these are relationships where we get growth even after 10 years. And it allows us then to get phone conversations between clients who then want to engage with us because they heard something from someone else. So I will start and end with execution and the importance of execution. And there is a point at which the ability to execute complex deals, to execute complex solutions in a global delivery environment across multiple markets that we typically deal with in many of these client situations becomes a constraint that you have to think about and make sure that you don't do something that then hurts your reputation. And we are very conscious of that. We've been conscious of that from the day we became an independent company in 2005. It's one of the guiding principles of the company. Net Promoter Score is the way we measure it.

Right. That makes sense. On a related basis, I was wondering, given the shift to more digital-type work, analytics, all the newer technologies that you mentioned that are clearly impacting the BPM and analytics space, are you seeing a change in the typical productivity gains that you see -- or the headwinds you see in any given year as you pass on the productivity benefits to your end clients?

Mayank, yes. I wouldn't call it headwinds. Passing on productivity benefits to clients using new technologies is a good thing, and we feel proud about that. I think our clients think that we are really good at that, have always been. Now we have new technologies to do that, so we don't think about it as headwinds. But obviously, our growth has to take into account that, and it does take into account that. So the way to think about it is if traditional ways of driving productivity used to drive 3% to 4% annual productivity in the same kind of work, then, today, that should be 7% to 8% on the average across all the work that we do. Now some of that becomes 20% in some cases, and some of that is nothing because there's nothing new we can do because everything has been done. So obviously, it changes depending on the type of work. And that takes into account the final growth that we deliver. So to deliver 12%, 13% growth, it means total growth has to be of the order of magnitude of 20%.

Our next question comes from the line of Justin Donati from Wells Fargo Securities.

Just wondering, does the 2020 guidance embed anything for potentially taking market share in some social media content from competitors who are exiting that business?

So Justin, I'll start by saying that content, moderation, trust and safety as a service line a couple of years back we chose as a very important service line and a strategic service line for us, and we've been investing -- we've been creating capabilities. We have a set of great relationships there. So we obviously have planned for continued growth in that service line, having seen growth over the last few years in that service line. And we have a fantastic team with a great reputation in the marketplace with the clients that we serve. Do some of the things that have happened in the marketplace provide opportunities? The answer is yes. But is that the only opportunity there? The answer is no. It is a space that is changing rapidly. It's providing a lot of opportunities across a range of clients. So we've, of course, factored in growth in that service line as part of our strategy, but it's not dependent on one event.

At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Roger Sachs for closing remarks.

Thank you, everybody, for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking to you again next quarter.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.