Good afternoon and welcome to the Globant Third Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Paula Conde, Investor Relations Officer. Please go ahead.

Thanks, operator, and thank you all for joining us today on our call to review our 2018 third quarter financial results. By now, you should have received a copy of the earnings release. If you have not, a copy is available on our website, investors.globant.com. Our speakers today are Martin Migoya, Chief Executive Officer; Juan Urthiague, Chief Financial Officer; and Alejandro Scannapieco, Globant’s EVP and General Manager of U.S. East Region. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the comments on our call today may be deemed forward-looking statements. This includes our business and financial outlook and the answers to some of your questions. Such statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties as described in the Company's earnings release and other filings with the SEC. Please note that we follow IFRS accounting rules in our financial statements. During our call today, we will report non-IFRS or adjusted measures, which is how we track performance internally and the easiest way to compare Globant to our peers in the industry. You will find a reconciliation of IFRS and non-IFRS measures at the end of the press release we published on our Investor Relations website announcing this quarter results. I'd like now to turn the call over to Martin Migoya, our CEO.

Thank you, Paula. Hi, everybody, and thanks for joining us today. I'm pleased to be here to share with you some updates on our business and financial performance of the three months ended September 30, 2018. At the end of the call, Juan will share with you our outlook for Q4 2018. Later on, we'll open up to questions with Alejandro as well. Q3 2018 was another record quarter for Globant, closing at $134.6 million in revenue and a robust 22.7% year-over-year growth. This solid growth was mainly driven by our top 10 accounts. They delivered revenue growth of 37.8% over the third quarter of 2017 and 7.9% sequentially. As in previous periods, we continued to enlarge our relationship with our key customers. We now have 90 accounts over $1 million in annual revenues compared to 78 one year ago. Additionally, during the last 12 months, we have 9 accounts above $10 million in annual revenues compared to 7 accounts for the same period last year. Finally, I'm proud to announce that we have reached our first $50 million account on the last 12-month basis. Later, during the call, Juan will share more details on our financial performance. Now, let me go over some of the news and highlights of the past quarter. Q3 has been an amazing period in regards to our performance, deeply correlated to the market opportunity we continue to see. As IDC points out, by 2022, over 60% of the global GDP will be digitalized with growth in every industry driven by digital enhanced offering, operations and relationship. It will drive almost $7 trillion in IT related spending from 2019 through 2022. On top of that, by 2024, AI-enabled user interfaces and process automation will replace one-third of today’s screen-based up. By 2020, 30% of enterprises…

Thanks, Martin, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me start by summarizing the results of our third quarter and nine months ended September 30, 2018. I will then discuss our guidance for the fourth quarter of 2018. I am very pleased with our third quarter financial performance. During this quarter, we delivered strong revenue growth, improved gross and operating margins, and generated significant cash. Our revenues came in at the new record level of $134.6 million, 22.7% over third quarter of last year, and 5.2% over Q2 2018. During Q3, 2018, Disney was once again our largest customer. Our relationship with them continues to be strong and healthy with several opportunities in different business lines. Revenues for top 10 customers increased 37.8% over third quarter of 2017 and 7.9% sequentially. We are excited with the fact that high potential accounts are scaling up and becoming large and meaningful within our customer portfolio. During the last 12 months ended September 30, 2018, rendered services to 344 customers, 90 of which accounted for more than $1 million in annual revenue compared to 78 customers one year ago. During the last 12 months, we also had nine accounts over $10 million in annual revenues compared to just seven accounts for the same period last year. And five accounts above $20 million in annual revenues compared to 3 for the same period last year. We’ll continue to grow the size of our accounts aligned with our 50-Squared strategy. In terms of industry diversification, we remain pretty much balanced among the different verticals that we serve. Our top three verticals for this quarter were media and entertainment with 26.2% of revenues; banks, financial services and insurance with 22.3% of revenues; and travel and hospitality with 17% of revenues. Our exposure to consumer retail and manufacturing space…

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Tien-Tsin Huang with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Juan, and welcome back to the call. I wanted to -- I think, what stood out to me was you guys did quite a bit of hiring this quarter, which is a good leading indicator. I'm curious what -- where are you hiring geographically and what areas, and any potential forward implications to your expense or margin base, given the hiring?

Yes. Hello, Tien-Tsin. Thanks for welcome back. Yes. I mean, Q3 was really good in terms of net hiring. We added a little bit more than 500 IT professionals during in this quarter. As it has been the case in the last few quarters, the locations where we're growing the fastest are Colombia, Mexico and India. We continue to see those locations outpacing the rest of the locations where we are. We think that, at the end of the day that will help us to have a more diversified strategy, which is what we have been implementing since the IPO and will also allow us to tap into talent pools in every region. Also, we have -- as you know, we have a small operation in Belarus that has also been growing, but the numbers are still small.

Okay. That's good. So, all outside of Argentina. I guess, as my follow-up, I'll ask, the guidance for this year all makes sense, is there -- can you give us a little bit of hint or direction maybe on margins for 2019, given what you've seen -- I know, there's a lot of moving pieces? But, I think it'd be helpful. Thank you.

Yes. As of now, of course, we are working on next year’s numbers. What we're seeing as of now is that there are, as you said, a lot of moving pieces. We have strong margins right now and we are seeing also good margins for Q4. For next quarter -- for the next year, the combination between inflation and FX in all different currencies where we are operating creates some noise. But, we continue back to the same target that we set up some years ago. I mean, we’ll target 38% to 40% gross margin. And we’ll also work hard to keep a little bit of dilution on SG&A. But, as of now, we would still say 38% to 40% in terms of gross margin.

The next question comes from Margaret Nolan with William Blair. Please go ahead.

Hi, guys. I'm hoping you can give us your updated thoughts on tax rates, particularly into 2019, especially as we start to think about how tax rates in some of your geographies may change?

Yes. Sure, Maggie? How are you doing. So, in terms of tax, typically tax rates are stable in the 21% to 23% range. However, when we have quarters where there is a significant depreciation of a currency and especially in the case of Argentina, that puts some noise in the income tax for the specific quarter. But assuming that the peso will depreciate but at a stable rate, we continue to think that 21% to 23% is a rational tax rate for next year.

Okay, understood. And then, can you give us an understanding of if you are seeing in the early traction from clients with your enhanced marketing offering kind of in the context of that partnership with Wayin?

Yes. Maggie, this is Ale. We are seeing good traction in several different angles and several different industries. We are -- as you know and this is not only related to our CONVERGE event but we're executing several different initiatives in terms of market lead generation. I think that combined with the farm-in of the existing relationships is definitely yielding very good results. We see a lot of traction, particularly in the financial services vertical, in the media and entertainment vertical, in the professional and services industry. I think what's -- something that is happening in the marketplace and that we have seen lately that a combination of acceleration of some digital projects and digital integrations in some of the accounts also combined with some early initiative from the AI and cognitive space, so all of them together, they are definitely gaining traction. So, we’re at the sweet spot of what is happening in the marketplace in terms of demand and very well positioned with our customers.

The next question comes from Avishai Kantor with Cowen. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. The first question on Disney, which remains very strong growing 42% year-over-year and 30% sequentially. Can you give us a sense where the growth is coming from, between parks and the media divisions to as much as you can elaborate on that?

Yes, sure. How are you doing, Avishai? I think the opportunity at Disney remains very large. As you probably are aware, Disney just restructured their divisions between consumer interactive and international, we're very well positing in those places. Of course, a distraction continues to be the theme park division, the division that’s within this environment. But having said so, we have also made progress on media. We have also made progress with ESPN. I think, the overall relationship with Disney is very healthy. This whole thing about the restructuring is playing as a tailwind for us. You know that some already existing accounts like [indiscernible] are also part of Century Fox. So, that's also going to a yield another opportunity. And hopefully, Disney this year running rate is going to become the first 50-Squared customer for real for Globant. So, overall, I can say that still the big and core division is the theme park division. We're also seeing traction from other divisions at Disney. That was our plan since inception.

And my next question on Uber Eats, is that global or that’s just in Latin America?

For the time being, it's only Latin America I would say.

So could you see -- is there a potential to expand into other regions, you think that’s possible?

We think so. It’s a first deal and the first project that we're running with Uber. I think it's very experimental in Latin America. So, we're very happy with the nature of the project. So, definitely, this could be the beginning of a very large relationship.

Great. Thank you so much for the details. And I'm very happy to see that you guys all survived the first leg of the super classical.

There you go.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Joseph Foresi with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead.

Hi. I guess, the old team is back together, Juan. I think you've covered most of 2019 or some of the early stuff around 2019. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the top-line, and even if it's in general terms, what do you think growth is going to be like? And also this quarter, it seemed like Disney was back at it, but maybe the accounts outside of the top accounts didn’t grow at that pace. Maybe you could break down growth for us from Disney versus not Disney, to the extent you can on the long-term side.

So, yes, I mean, as you can see from our hiring, we feel very confident about the opportunity that we are facing. When we look at the revenue growth, in our top accounts, yes, Disney did extremely well, growing 41% year-on-year. But, when we look at the top 5, we see 53%, we look at the top 10, 37% and even when we look at the rest of the accounts, the growth is still there. So, we are very, very happy with how most of our top accounts are performing. And also we have some new names that are not yet top-10 account but we are already working with them, some we can name, as Ale just mentioned Uber, some we cannot name as of now. But, we know that those are great opportunities for 2019. We are working on some interesting projects. But, if we continue to be successful that we’ll bring a lot of revenue going forward. As for the future, we always like to -- we will remain with the same targets that we always have of 20% organic growth. That's what we have been saying since the IPO. I was just looking at the numbers earlier today, our guidance for 2018 is at around 26% for the year. It's the fifth year in a row above 26% or at least 26%. So, we feel very confident about the opportunity we are seeing, very good traction from -- not only from Disney but also from other very large accounts. And also, we have some new names that also make us feel comfortable about 2019. And that’s pretty much what we’re seeing terms of markets.

Then on the margins, I know you gave some rough ideas around 38% to 40% range. What is your expectation for FX built into the margin guidance?

So, when we look at Q4, I mentioned during the call, between 39% and 41%. Basically, we expect the peso to remain stable where it is right now, at least until the end of the year. And then for the future, it will be trend on of course on how the economy is doing here. There is a lot of moving pieces in terms of the macro economy at this point. But, we have seen that according to the government put up in the economic plan, the peso will follow -- or the depreciation of the peso will follow the inflation of the country. At least that is what has been stated by the Minister of Economy. If that's the case, that’s good for us.

Got it. And then just the last one for me on the Argentinean economy. Any concerns around wage inflation in the country? And maybe you could talk about how the economy is affecting day to day business, and maybe labor supply as we head into next year? Thanks.

Look, unfortunately inflation in Argentina has been between 20% and 30% for the last three years, and we have been managing the Company pretty successfully in that environment. Of course, it would be better if inflation goes down. And hopefully now, today, the House -- the Senate passed the budget law for next year. It has a lot of fiscal cuts, a lot of fiscal decisions that should eventually take inflation down. So, we have been dealing with inflation, we’re used to that. We think that we have been able to manage it successfully in the last three years and we expect to continue doing so. So, we believe we understand how to manage it.

If I may add to that, Joe. I think, the government now is trying to articulate through the central bank, a very tight monitory policy, interest rates are up to sky. I’m not saying that that is going to dramatically reduce in inflation in the short run, but it should have impact probably 3 to 4 months from now. So, our expectation is that at certain point that inflation is going to ease up a little bit, but still we're talking about high levels of inflation as Juan pointed out.

Thank you.

But, also, if you read about the Argentina economy, you will see that the government talks about like a moving range for the peso and that range will be increased by 3% per month. So, basically what that means is that the government expects the Argentinean peso to move in line with inflation.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Joe.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Martin Migoya for any closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you very much everyone. Looking forward to see you on the next earnings release. Thank you very much for participating and for your continued support on every quarter. Thank you. See you next.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.