Eclerx Services Ltd

NSE:ECLERX

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to eClerx Services Limited Q4 FY '20 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Rohitash Gupta, CFO of eClerx Services Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

[Rohitash Gupta, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you. Good evening, and thank you for joining eClerx' Q4 and FY '20 earnings call for the year ending March 31, 2020. Firstly, I would like to thank our employees, customers, shareholders, regulators and vendor partners who have very thoughtfully helped us over the last few months in reducing the economic, business and employee health threat caused by the pandemic. The delivery paradigm for BPM industry and eClerx' changed overnight. I want to specifically call out the monumental efforts of our IT teams to achieve an unimaginable feat of migrating from closed ODC environment to flexible work-from-home environment in a matter of weeks, supported by our administration team to deliver work-from-home assets during lockdowns and our HR team for reaching out every single employee to check for their well-being.As a combined effort, we reached a work-from-home coverage by mid-April, which exceeded similar metric of our much larger client captives and BPM peers in India. Our work-from-home switch was very swift in our global operations due to higher proportion of preexisting work-from-home infrastructure. By May end, we were able to achieve work-from-home productivity very similar to work from office. Our focus in the last few months has been on relentless execution of business continuity plan with single-minded focus on employee safety. Last 10 days or so of March were severely impacted for India delivery due to sudden transition, which required us to put multiple pieces together, including client approvals, availability of computers and broadband at employee homes and enablement of data security on a very challenging and diverse IT environment. Almost all of our clients were extremely supportive for work-from-home enablement, including nearly all of the banking clients, thereby approving vast majority of our offshore delivery to work-from-home in very quick time. Further, in some cases, we have certain processes such as voice were not approved to do work-from-home, we were able to eventually migrate them to alternate work streams such as chat. Onshore consulting and Fayetteville delivery were also impacted for part of March due to furloughs and shelter-in-place orders. However, CLX was hit the hardest in Q4 due to severe health crisis caused early on due to COVID-19 in Italy. We hope that demand situation for CLX will be alleviated in Q2 as Italy returns to an early normalcy now, and we hope to see more brands ready to use our nimbler CGI capabilities, thereby accelerating market shift from traditional photo shoot and post-production process to CGI. Overall peak supply constraints impact and demands softness-led revenue decrease due to COVID are likely to play out in Q1. And hence, Q1 will see considerable decrease in top line and possibly more adverse impact on bottom line, and we hope to return to our historical performance levels now by late FY '21. On demand side, we saw delays both in go-lives of new projects and roll-offs, although roll-offs have exceeded new sales for last few months contributing to anticipated revenue decline in Q1. New client conversations also slowed down as clients were reassessing their priorities and reshuffling their budgets. Amongst our client industry sectors, travel was hit the hardest. However, that is about 2% of our total revenue, thereby not causing any major impact on us. Much of our revenue comes from Fortune 500 type clients in industries that did not come to a complete standstill during this crisis. That coupled with the fact that we were close to 90% delivery within a month of lockdown ensured that revenue impact due to supply constraints were limited only to late March and April. On pricing front, H2 FY '20 was relatively better period for us as we logged price hikes with several of our top 10 clients. Our near-term approach is to offer clients price competitive managed services solutions to their emerging challenges and changing priorities in tackling COVID impact on their businesses. Moving on to Q4 financials. eClerx completed Q4 with USD 47.7 million in revenue, with a constant currency decline of about 6.4% on Y-o-Y basis, with vast majority of decline coming from offshore business. Half of the Q-o-Q decline of about USD 4 million was attributable to COVID impacted supply situation whereas rest of the decline was due to planned roll-offs that happened earlier in the quarter, but could not be replenished due to tough demand environment. Amongst our strategic areas, analytics has maintained double-digit growth in Q4 Y-o-Y, but we saw a decline in managed services in Q4 due to lower volumes in Q4, direct impact on travel clients who majorly are on managed services model and coupled with supply constraints in later part of Q4, as discussed earlier. Our other income during Q4 increased sharply by about INR 55 million due to ForEx movement-related revaluations. Our EBIT in Q4 stood at INR 760 million, declining sequentially, with almost all of the decline contributed by the revenue drop. Our hedges of about $127 million will strike at INR 75.2 to $1, giving us visibility of locking rates similar to current spot over next 2 years. However, on FY '20 annual basis, we returned to a modest constant currency growth of 0.6%, closing the year at USD 200.5 million. We have not accrued SEIS income for FY '20, and we will review that during H1 of FY '21 when SEIS policy implementation is clearer and foreign trade normalizes. Our FY '20 EBIT stood at INR 2,993 million, which was lower by about INR 121 million Y-o-Y. However, it remained flat if we were to adjust it for SEIS and impact of AS116.Our cash balance at year-end stood comfortably above $100 million, and we had an exceptional operating cash flow generation in FY '20 at about INR 3,328 million, which is more than 150% conversion of PAT. Excluding the possible catch-up of SEIS income, we expect further sequential decline in revenue and absolute EBIT in Q1 versus Q4 due to increased work-from-home cost. We expect CapEx and thereby depreciation to increase during FY '21 due to provisioning of work-from-home infrastructure. We have taken several measures, however, to minimize this margin impact due to new unplanned costs through 1 to 2 quarters deferral of increment and promotion cycle, natural reduction in travel cost and reduction in administrative services and office rental costs. We are also seeing sharp reduction in attrition in Q1, which may help bring productivity improvements in the near term. We expect our FY '21 effective tax rate to be around 26%. We are seeing increased deal flow for our continuing target search for inorganic growth, and we are also seeing moderation in target valuations. Cash has been the most valuable asset for us during the current global crisis, and we expect to distribute it to shareholders as per our stated policy, but only after giving due consideration for higher cash needs of the organic business during the current uncertainty and for increased probability of inorganic growth event. Except for unforeseen circumstances during March, we are satisfied with the overall outcome of this year, and we'll continue to focus on execution in FY '21 to overcome challenges posed by the economic environment. With this, I will open up for the Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Manik Taneja from Emkay Global.

[Manik Taneja, Research Analyst]

Both PD -- this is a question both for PD and Anjan. If you could detail out your thoughts across the 3 streams of our business in terms of how you're seeing the business get impacted because of COVID? And how do you see things evolving going forward?

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

Manik, this is PD. So let me attempt to answer, and Anjan can supplement with his thoughts. I think as Rohitash alluded to in his opening remarks, we've seen softness in a couple of specific areas. One definitely was CLX because of the situation that was prevailing in Northern Italy, which affected not just us, but also our clients who were unable to send work to us because they were also in lockdown. We've also seen impact on our retail and travel clients who are clients of the digital business. We saw some impact initially on the voice processes like Rohitash mentioned, because those aren't very amenable to being delivered from home. But on the whole, I would say, our telecom business and the banking business has been more resilient because, I guess, to a degree, the nature of work done is more business-as-usual support and less discretionary in that sense. With all that said, I think if I net it out, we saw -- you saw that we had a drop in Q4 over Q3. Q1, we expect, will be the trough because we'll have both -- we'll have some supply side effects that still lingered on through most of April, and you certainly have demand side effects that will continue to play in Q1. I think as we go forward, the hope is that we should slowly start seeing recovery from the trough of Q1. The pace of that recovery is still uncertain because I think it's linked also with the pace of opening up in the West. But I think broadly speaking, we would expect sequentially some improvement in the remaining quarters. If all goes well, hopefully, by the time we get to Q4 this year, we'll be at a similar trajectory as where we were in Q4 last year. But I mean that's just shooting in the dark. I have no concrete way to say that, and it's not -- certainly not a guidance. But I think directionally, we are quite clear that Q1 should be the trough and hopefully from Q2, we should see a modest recovery from there. But Anjan, I'll leave it to you to add on thoughts.

[Anjan Malik, Co]

No, I've got nothing to add to that. That's good.

[Manik Taneja, Research Analyst]

Sure. Sir, the other question that I had was for Rohitash. So you've talked about some costs related to work-from-home enablement hitting us in Q1. Is there some hit of that cost even in Q4 FY '20?

[Rohitash Gupta, Chief Financial Officer]

So Manik, Q4 was very minimal. Q1 is the substantial cost, which will run into multiple of crores. But I think Q4 was very negligible on that count.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Sandip Agarwal from Edelweiss.

[Sandip Kumar Agarwal, Vice President]

I wish good health and stay safe for the whole team. PD, I have just one -- I'd say 2 questions basically. One, where do you think that the impact of COVID will start flattening out? I understand you're saying Q4 is the one where you will see probably the same level of activity which was there earlier. But this is also -- the question is more relevant from the perspective that we have seen quite a bit of pain before that also. So how will you put this that this pain puts that -- put our recovery more behind than we were earlier anticipating to the extent of the impact of this pandemic? Or it has a rippling effect of exaggerating that pain for us, in the sense that if we were earlier expecting a 3, 4 quarters recovery time and this pandemic, let's say, impacts us for 2 quarters. So is this a 6-quarter pain versus your earlier expectation? Or it could be 8, 9 quarters pain? That is the way I would put. So I'm not saying exactly the quarters going forward. I'm just trying to understand whether there is a rippling impact of this pandemic also on our recovery path.

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

So Sandip, I confess I'm not sure I fully understood your question, but let me try and attempt to answer it in a different way. So if you go back to the statement I made to Manik, which again, I'll caveat by saying it's conjecture at this point. But we hope that Q4 of FY '21 gets us back to levels of where we were in Q4 FY '20. If that scenario plays out, then effectively, we've lost a year, right, because it's taken us a year to get down to the trough and then get back to the place where we were pre-pandemic. So that's when we are thinking about it that, I guess, Q4 was a $48 million to $50 million quarter. So the next time we reach that milestone, and then I would say that we have reversed the effect of the pandemic.

[Sandip Kumar Agarwal, Vice President]

Okay. And also, to some extent, I wanted to understand that why we are talking about only the cost hike because [indiscernible] see there are many areas where cost cutting could be significant. And this is probably the time where we can reinnovate or rethink on our cost structure. I understand that in our business model, work-from-home cannot be as well-implemented or, I would say, as easily doable like the -- probably the software services part, but still I think there are a lot of areas where we can contain costs in a significant way. Second, why we are not allowing our natural attrition to not fill up for some time till the time we are seeing -- not having clarity of growth coming back or till the time we see that we can be in a revenue declining scenario. So is it a very optimistic outlook for future so that we are ready to take a hit right now? Or is there something else which I'm missing? That is my last question.

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

So Sandip, let me answer that in reverse order. Your first question was about natural attrition. And if you look at the investor pack, we have a slide on headcount. And you will see that we were at 9,500 total headcount in FY '19 Q4, and we are at 8,500 total headcount in FY '20 Q4. So we have dropped 1,000 FTE, give or take, over that 1-year period, exactly for the reasons you described that, obviously, as we saw some challenges on the revenue front, we let natural attrition take its course and rightsized the staff strength. Obviously, post the pandemic, I would say, to the comments Rohitash made, attrition has really, really reduced because, obviously, if you put yourself in the shoes of employees, it's hard also for them to find alternative positions at this time. So April and May, I think we've seen our lowest attrition ever. But before that, to the point that you are making, exactly, that is the strategy, that we have allowed natural attrition to rebalance total team size. On your first question of cost-saving opportunities, absolutely. I think we've tried to utilize all those opportunities. Rohitash mentioned that we have deferred pay raises for -- from between 3 to 6 months. And after a certain seniority in the organization, senior management has elected to keep its pay flat this year. Obviously, we've had savings on travel. We had some savings on services like local transport, the cab services and buses that we run, housekeeping, et cetera. So there will be substantial elements of savings as well that will offset the BCP imposed costs. And therefore, I think, to your point, probably the biggest net driver of reduction in margin in Q1 is a drop in revenue. So we do expect a drop in revenue in Q1 over Q4. And the margin that was coming from that revenue will also go consequently. So I mean, I think from a BCP perspective, not all the costs are incremental. I think we have the ability to offset a lot of it, but the drop in revenue will definitely be painful from a margin perspective.

[Sandip Kumar Agarwal, Vice President]

So a follow-up on that. I agree that -- with the point you mentioned of 9,500 becoming 8,500. But our attrition rate is such that, we could have brought down probably this number to 7,500, 7,800 unless it was very, very critical or we have probably not -- we have built in some bench for some sharp turnaround in growth, which probably got impacted due to COVID-19. So I was just trying to understand that limited point that was there a sharp turnaround in sight which got impacted because of this thing?

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

No. So Sandip, sorry, if I can just respond to that. If you look at revenues, FY '19 was, give or take, $200 million. FY '20 was also give or take $200 million. And we dropped 1,000 heads over that period, right, for delivering essentially the same revenue. So I think we were quite happy with our exit in FY '20, Q4. We feel that, that 8,500 headcount was rightsized to service the base of revenue that we had at that point. From a bench perspective, from a utilization perspective, we thought that all those metrics were in the right zone.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Madhu Babu from Centrum Broking.

[Madhu Babu, Research Analyst]

So what is the quantum of revenue decline we can look in? Because large caps itself were saying like 5%, 6% drop will be there in 1Q. Considering that we had a soft 4Q, so what is the kind of drop we can look at for 1Q?

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

Madhu, I think I wouldn't want to put a number on it because we don't really offer guidance as a policy. But I think direction of travel is very clear, given that we are in for almost mid-June by now. So we thought it's fair, especially in light of the recent SEBI guidance, to share the COVID impact to at least show you the direction that we expect Q1 to go. I wouldn't want to share a precise number at this stage.

[Madhu Babu, Research Analyst]

Okay. And second, on the capital allocation, now the cash is around INR 770 crore. Last time, we did around INR 265 crore kind of the buyback. So I mean even if you conserve cash, I think a similar quantum of payout can be expected this year because the balance sheet is sizable in terms of the net cash position?

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

So we haven't taken a call on that, but I would add 2 points of caution. One is that to the point we made, we do expect to see more inorganic opportunities in the wake of the COVID pandemic because, especially for smaller companies, I think this has imposed stress on their business models. So Rohitash probably receives about 20 to 25 teasers any given year. We expect this year, we'll see a significant increment to that. So we want to retain some cash to take advantage of those opportunities if they should present themselves, point one. Point two also, I think from our own internal perspective, obviously, there's a little bit more uncertainty than usual, given the impact of this pandemic, is there a second wave, not a second wave. So we'd want to conserve cash also to hedge against that uncertainty. Having said that, our stated policy is to pay out at least 50% of net income. And I think from that perspective, we remain committed to doing that over periods of time.

[Madhu Babu, Research Analyst]

So just on that CLX part. I think, predominantly, they are based in Italy, so -- which has been one of the most hit. And we have a couple of other centers in Thailand as well, apart from U.S. So just on the global delivery centers, how is the momentum? And acquisition, what is the target we are looking this time? Because it's been a good amount of time since we have done a sizable acquisition.

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

Yes. So on the CLX front, I think as we shared, we saw some effect in March because Italy went into shutdown basically end of February. April was the trough. May was slightly better. June is even -- June is, I would say, almost close to normal. Hopefully, July will be semi-normal in terms of production volumes at CLX. So that's been the trajectory that we've seen in CLX. And Thailand is basically a back-office to Italy. So the volumes they see are a function of the incoming demand into Italy. In terms of your second question on areas of interest, and I think that hasn't really changed. We continue to like businesses that serve large corporate clients, typically are performing work that has continuing demand, and therefore, they tend to have long-tenured relationships with their customers. I think those are pretty broad filters and the nature of the customer base and the type of work are important filters for us besides, of course, financial filters around valuations, et cetera. So we continue to look within that target segment.

[Madhu Babu, Research Analyst]

Sir, and last one is work-from-home team. I mean, is it going to continue even post COVID? Or is it just overhyped for the medium term? And how are we -- because we are not a typical IT services company, we are process-driven and at least large banking accounts, the approvals might be difficult. So next 3, 4 year perspective, how do you see this work-from-home, whether it will be a part of your existing delivery model or it will just fade away?

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

So I think it's not totally clear at this stage. I'll share with you where we are and sort of near term what we see. So it did take us time to convert a large part of our workforce into work-from-home because all the IT infrastructure we had was desktops in the offices, besides laptops that were given to relatively senior employees. So first of all, the challenge for us was to procure laptops in that quantity, along with things like data cards and then distribute them to all the employees in the middle of the lockdown and the curfew. So that was a herculean challenge, but we got over that. And I think today, of our 8,500 staff, probably, I would say barring maybe 300 to 500 people, everybody else is expected to work productively from home. So I think we have managed to make that transition to the point that Rohitash was sharing in his opening remarks. As we go through this model, I think it has both pros and cons. We definitely see people able to put in more time if required because they no longer have to spend time on the commutes. On the other hand, there is a latency penalty because, obviously, their connectivity at home may not be as good as that in the office. There's also information security risk in enhance when people work from home as compared to what we are able to manage in the office. And from a client perspective, I would say, some clients don't have a strong opinion on where the work is done, but some others do, and they tend to prefer people working from the office, primarily, I would think from an information security perspective. So I would guess that once the health situation stabilizes, we will end up going back to the offices, although a small percentage of staff may continue to work from home, especially in functions like shared services. But I think people engaged in doing work that handles sensitive data, I would think that most clients would be more comfortable having them back within the confines of the office and a more controlled environment. Anjan, I don't know if you want to add something to this?

[Anjan Malik, Co]

No. I think you got it.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of V.P. Rajesh from Banayan Capital.

[V.P. Rajesh, Managing Partner & Portfolio Manager]

My first question is, what is the ramp-up in Fayetteville facility? Has it started coming back to a normal kind of shift mode that you used to have earlier before the COVID happened?

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

Anjan, do you want to respond to that?

[Anjan Malik, Co]

Yes. So actually, Fayetteville has been one of the first facilities to get back to normal. So I think over this week and next week, we're basically expecting to be back to normal over there. So -- yes, I mean, I think -- but obviously, you're going to be taking into account things like social distancing and some of the new rules that may be put into place. But North Carolina is probably one of the states that wasn't that hard hit. So it's been relatively quick to return.

[V.P. Rajesh, Managing Partner & Portfolio Manager]

I see. So from an operating level, would it be profitable or breakeven or losing money?

[Anjan Malik, Co]

PD, do you want to take that one?

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

Rohitash, I think you'll be best equipped to answer that question.

[Rohitash Gupta, Chief Financial Officer]

So V.P., I think we have spoken about it in previous calls as well. So in Q4, we were profitable at EBIT level excluding the COVID impact. And for the full year, we were EBITDA positive in FY '20 in Fayetteville.

[V.P. Rajesh, Managing Partner & Portfolio Manager]

Right. And in terms of Q1, would that be the case? Or -- meaning, what I'm trying to understand is that once it normalizes, it will be back to being profitable, is that a fair assumption?

[Rohitash Gupta, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. So as Anjan was mentioning, now we are returning back to office in Fayetteville, the second caveat will be that the normal volumes should also come through. So once these 2 things happen -- when I say normal, I mean, let's say, February kind of volumes. Once that comes in, we will be back to EBIT positive straight away.

[V.P. Rajesh, Managing Partner & Portfolio Manager]

Okay. My next question is regarding the capital allocation. So we are sitting about $100 million of cash. And looking at the free cash flow, we'll probably generate another, let's say, $40 million of cash flow per year. So in terms of the acquisition, yes, I agree that you will get a lot more opportunities these years. But given where the stock price is, and I think last year, we did the buyback at INR 1,500, so therefore, it would make sense to go for a buyback because whatever cash you have left even after that, I'm sure you will be able to find acquisition candidates that you have enough cash. So I am just curious like how you guys are thinking about it because the stock is at 25% of your last buyback price?

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

Yes. So I think definitely, the buyback is an option for us. And as you may know, we've used the buyback as a vehicle to return cash to shareholders pretty consistently over the last 3 or 4 years. So it continues to be an option for us. Price, size, et cetera, is all TBD, timing as well. But you're right, I think that's an option under active consideration.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Akshay Ramnani from Axis Capital.

[Akshay Ramnani, Senior Manager of IT, Internet & Telecom]

My question is on pricing. So you mentioned that you expect to provide some price concessions to client. So what is the quantum of price concessions are you seeing right now? And how much of this price discount would you call it as temporary or permanent in nature? And how soon do you expect to recoup on the pricing front?

[Rohitash Gupta, Chief Financial Officer]

So Akshay, this is Rohitash. I think you misheard. I very clearly mentioned, we have seen uptick in the pricing. And H2 of FY '20 has been relatively better for us on the client pricing front. So there was no discussion on the price reduction. Now if your question is about forward looking, do we have to give price concession, I don't think there is any such consideration or request on the table as of now.

[Akshay Ramnani, Senior Manager of IT, Internet & Telecom]

Okay. Okay. So you don't see any material pricing talks with the clients currently. And in this scenario, where we could aggressively do some price -- provide some pricing discounts to clients and we have been seeing some shift to on-site delivery for a few years now. So would you call this COVID as a point where you can think about offshoring more of your work with providing some price concessions to client?

[Rohitash Gupta, Chief Financial Officer]

PD?

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

Anjan, do you want to take that?

[Anjan Malik, Co]

Yes. I think if the question is broadly, do we see any change in the demand for onshore work or offshore work because of COVID, not necessarily. I mean, I think in the early days or the middle of March and late March, there was some discussion about whether there was too much concentration risk in India for many of our clients. But I think as time has passed, there has actually been more comfort built around the way India managed or the Indian vendors and the captives managed delivery during this period. So I'd say that there's actually been more confidence built. So to the extent that you feel, do we think that there's an opportunity to do more offshore work? We think so, yes. Do we continue to feel that customers would want work done in their local jurisdictions as a result of more localized demand because the customers are not able to travel as much? That also possibly yes. So I think we see demand both for offshore and onshore over the next -- over the next medium -- over the medium term. But we don't think that there's a marked reduction or increase one way or the other.

[Akshay Ramnani, Senior Manager of IT, Internet & Telecom]

Okay. Okay. Sure. That's helpful. And last one on revenues. So can you quantify what percentage of the revenue would come from impacted verticals of, say, travel, retail, manufacturing or other impacted verticals as per your sense? And what's the proportion of revenue where you have been seeing challenges? Any color on that front?

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

So Rohitash can supplement. I'll just kick off with a couple of thoughts. I think that -- the answer to that question is also a function of time horizon because, obviously, in the immediate aftermath of the lockdown, we saw some constraints almost across the board. But then as time progressed, in certain areas, we were almost able to get back to what I would call normal levels of demand and delivery. Continuing effect, I think, is more in -- most in travel and retail. And to some degree, also in the luxury business in Italy. So I'd say primarily concentrated around our digital business. Next would be some impact on our customer ops business and least affected would be the banking business, purely, again, as a function of the kind of work we do in each of those 3 verticals. But Rohitash, you can add some more color, if you want.

[Rohitash Gupta, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes, that covers it all, PD. So I already mentioned, Akshay, that travel is barely 2% of our total revenue. And retail, if you include the luxury good brands, then it is probably high single digits. And beyond that, it's banking, telecom, high-tech, those kind of industries, which make up a vast majority of our revenue, which were not majorly impacted, I would say.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have the next question as a follow-up question from the line of Manik Taneja from Emkay Global.

[Manik Taneja, Research Analyst]

So PD, I wanted to pick your brains on a couple of things. Number one thing is that, at least with -- in some parts of our services portfolio, which typically compete with the captives of our customers. And in the past, when we've seen currency essentially depreciate sharply with some lag, we've seen more competition emerging from the captive side or that translating in terms of price discounts. So your thoughts there? And the second question is that one of our large customer on the telecom media side essentially has also been building up its -- his own captive in Chennai. How do you see the situation evolve with that customer over the medium to longer term?

[Priyadarshan D. Mundhra, Co]

So I'm going to let Anjan respond to both of these. I think he'll do a better job than me of answering it, Manik.

[Anjan Malik, Co]

So Manik, we've had -- captives have been a way of life for the last 2 decades, in fact, the last 2.5 decades. So I'm not really sure if it's a new phenomena as such. If you look at actually IT wages indexed to U.S. dollars over the last decade or so, I think you'll find that most of it's compounded -- most indices will show you a compounding increase of between 5% and 7% per annum, right? So we -- and I think if you compare, for example, vendor prices like ours, you'll see that they've been flat to declining because of productivity, rate changes, lower inflation rates, et cetera, et cetera. It's -- or skill mix, et cetera, et cetera. So I think the -- what I would say is that our experienced buyers know that game very well, that going from vendor to captive or picking the captive strategy is typically a pretty short-term, 1- to 2-year viewpoint. Whereas I think if you look at total cost of ownership over 3 to 7 years of the vendor model, typically it's cheaper, caveated for, obviously, functions that are very sensitive or functions that are rapidly changing or that need to be co-located with technology because there's a big technology road map may have a different consideration, right? So we don't really see that captive, vendor choice being driven so much by FX, but much more by broader discussions about, like, look what functions are so-called proprietary that they have to stay in or those that they feel that co-locate with strategic technology road maps, giving it to vendors actually slows it down, right? So I think that's usually the first determination. We haven't really seen that change. And I think in COVID times, we don't know what the next steps are given just the travel restrictions that many of our stakeholders will have around sending work to India or, in fact, setting up new captives. I mean, I guess it's somewhat reflected in recent times in reductions in roll-off. But that's -- it's very temporary for now as far as we can see. The second question around the large telecom media. I mean this particular company uses something in the region of 25,000 vendor personnel just in the call center space, for example. And they are very sophisticated buyers of both, what I would call, third-party services as well as in-house facilities, both for customer care, for field operations and for technology services. So as -- and they don't just -- in fact, they buy a lot from most parts of the world. So I would say for a sophisticated buyer like that, these additional facilities tend to be at best an end. They tend very rarely to be an all-or-none decision. So we don't expect -- well, never is a long -- a big word, but we don't really expect any change in the strategy with respect to also with, what I would call, high-performing vendors in the short to medium term.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to the management for their closing comments. Thank you, and over to you.

[Rohitash Gupta, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, everyone, for joining with us today. Hope you guys will stay safe and look forward to talking to you next time.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of eClerx Services Limited, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.