Wipro Ltd

NSE:WIPRO

Earnings Call Analysis

Mixed Outcomes in Earnings Amid Market Headwinds

The company reported IT Services revenue reaching $2.66 billion, hitting the top end of its guidance, an accomplishment in light of global caution in investment. Operating margins remained resilient at 16%, in spite of seasonal challenges and salary increments. Total contract value of orders book hit $3.8 billion, alongside a robust 20% year-to-date growth in large deals, indicating client's confidence in the firm's enhanced efficiency. However, Europe showed a decrease in revenue of 4.3% sequentially, reflecting the region’s economic uncertainty. Looking ahead, the next quarter's revenue growth is cautiously projected between -1.5% to 0.5% in constant currency, with margins expected to mimic recent quarters' performance.

A Focused Shift Towards AI-Driven Transformation

In the rapidly evolving tech landscape, the company has observed a significant uptick in interest for artificial intelligence (AI) solutions within the automotive and manufacturing industries. Aimed at enhancing productivity throughout the R&D process and hastening new product development, the company's AI-driven initiatives, under the banner of 'Wipro Enterprise Futuring', are set to play a pivotal role in this sector. Leveraging the 'Wipro Gen AI Framework', the company is developing comprehensive assets across the entire AI stack, which encompasses models, platforms, and solutions, thus helping clients with model development, performance, privacy, and compliance. The emphasis on responsible, sustainable, and ethical AI development is also seen through the collaboration with a global healthcare insurer to strategically transform their contact center and potentially improve patient experience and operational efficiency.

Strategic Partnerships and Workforce Enablement

The company is expanding its strategic partnerships, including a collaboration with NVIDIA, to assist healthcare companies in framing AI-centric strategies, products, and services, leveraging NVIDIA's technology in tandem with the company's healthcare domain expertise. Another partnership with IBM aims to develop new joint solutions built on IBM Watson, to facilitate the deployment of reliable and sustainable AI. Such collaborations are complemented by internal initiatives, with training of over 210,000 Wipro employees on AI 101 skills and the introduction of personalized learning paths for various roles, ensuring the workforce is adept at incorporating AI into daily operations and client projects.

Adopting Internal AI Enhancements for Efficiency

The company is not just preaching AI transformation but also practicing it by integrating AI technology across its portfolio of platforms, striving for improvements in quality and productivity across various internal functions such as HR, marketing, sales, operations, finance, and even in software development, quality engineering, and testing. This AI 360 ecosystem adoption is positioned as a key factor behind the company's growing preference among clients as a consulting partner.

Financial Stability Despite Market Challenges

Amidst a challenging demand environment, marked by headwinds such as seasonal furloughs and employee salary increases, the company has managed to uphold resilient margins. This has been achieved through maximizing revenue performance, harnessing savings from structural improvements, and curtailing discretionary spending. Even with a sequential revenue drop of 1.7% in constant currency terms, the company enhanced its margins by over 60 basis points on a year-to-date basis. Additionally, the generation of robust operating cash flows, amounting to $576 million (177% of net income), indicates a strong financial discipline. The financial prudence extended to the working capital management and resulted in an increase of gross and net cash positions year-on-year, despite the completion of the company's largest share buyback in the preceding July.

A Pragmatic Outlook for the Upcoming Quarter

Looking ahead, the company provides a conservative guidance for the next quarter, projecting a sequential growth that ranges from a slight decrease of 1.5% to a marginal increase of 0.5% in constant currency terms. Margins are expected to remain range-bound, consistent with the previous quarters. However, with the market showing signs of recovery and the potential gains from ongoing transformation and efficiency initiatives, the company anticipates improvements in the subsequent periods. The forecast for the IT Services business segment's revenue stands between $2.615 billion and $2.669 billion.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Unknown Executive]

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Wipro's Third Quarter Fiscal '24 Earnings Press Conference. My name is [indiscernible]. I'm the Head of Global External Communications, and I'll be your moderator today. Joining me today on stage is our executive leadership team, who will be presenting our results. From your left to right, our Chief Operating Officer, Amit Choudhary; our Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Thierry Delaporte; our Chief Financial Officer, Aparna Iyer; and our Chief Human Resources Officer, Saurabh Govil. As usual, we'll kick off the conference with remarks from our CEO, followed by an operational update from our COO. Our CFO will conclude our formal remarks with an overview of our financials. We will then open the floor for questions.

Right now, please allow me to welcome our CEO, Thierry Delaporte to the podium.

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

Hello, everyone. Welcome to this new facility. Thank you for joining us today. We're really glad to have you here. And for sure, starting with wishing you the best wishes to you for the new year.

So I'll begin today's conference with an overview of our third quarter results, details of our sectoral performance, the demand environment and direction for the coming quarter as always. Earlier today, you've seen we've reported our numbers to the market and to our Board. I'm pleased to share that we've -- we're starting to see some healthy indicators for growth. Our IT Services revenue for the quarter is at the top end of our guidance. Revenue stands at $2.66 billion in reported currency. We've continued to book deals at a healthy pace. Even though Q3 is a short quarter due to the year-end holidays, order bookings in total contract value terms stand at $3.8 billion.

Our large deals, TCV, for the quarter was just over $900 million. On a year-to-date basis, that's a 20% growth. We booked 14 deals this quarter in the greater than $30 million category. By contrast, just for you to keep that in mind, we had booked 11 of such deals in the third quarter of last year. Net income for the quarter expanded by 1.8% sequentially. Operating margin stands at 16% despite seasonal furloughs and the annual salary increases for our employees, as you know. On a year-to-date basis, margins has improved by more than 60 basis points.

As you know, we have consistently invested in our people, in our processes and organizational efficiencies over the last several quarters. These investments are paying off. Our results demonstrate that at a fundamental level, Wipro is increasingly more streamlined, proactive and efficient. This has boosted our client trust in our teams, improved our win rate and also the type of deals we are winning. That is more of complex transformation deals. Wipro is not only benefiting from vendor consolidation, but we are also adding new logos while growing our business with existing clients. In fact, our clients tell me that they are seeing a more confident and a united effort from us. One Wipro. We are leveraging the depths and breadths of expertise and diversity inside Wipro. Contributions from our acquired firms, I name a few Capco, Rizing, Designit are more prominent and well received.

The demand environment overall, let's be clear, remains cautious. Clients are still making conservative investments, still looking for efficiency, more returns on investments and better optimization for existing investments. But we are seeing some indicators for growth. If you remember, we had called out a possible slowdown in the economy as growth in our consulting business slowed. We know that when the market turns consulting will be the first area to bounce back. In that context, I'm pleased to share that we've had a good performance from our consulting business with Capco reporting a double-digit sequential growth in order booking, the highest in the last 4 quarters.

Turning to our strategic market units now. We recorded a strong quarter for the Americas 1 market unit, where we booked half of our 14 large deals this quarter. Revenues in the market grew 2% sequentially led by health care, which actually grew 9% sequentially. In our Americas 2 market unit, we continue to see some softness, there is no question, largely on the BFSI and the energy and utility side of the business, hence, resulting in a 1.3% drop in revenue quarter-over-quarter.

That said, there is strong momentum in order bookings, which in total contract value terms increased 46% sequentially. In Europe, we've won 4 large deals in the third quarter despite the continuing economic weakness. These 4 new transformative deals add up to nearly $300 million in bookings. These deals underscore the success of our strategy in this market, there's no doubt. Revenue from Europe, however, decreased 4.3% sequentially in Q3.

Across the board, I want to say, across the board, but especially in our APMEA strategic market unit. We have worked on reducing low-margin accounts while slowly moving towards higher value, transformation projects. Revenues in this region declined 5.4% quarter-on-quarter. However, this strategy of pivoting towards higher-value business reflects in the margins we delivered in the region. Margin rose 240 basis points sequentially to 13.8%. That's the highest in the last 6 quarters. And once again, we are seeing consulting, especially Capco and Rizing play a big role in the complex deals we are winning in the market.

To continue this figure, we made some changes to our growth offices recently and we've communicated on that. With the foundational pillars for sales excellence set out by the growth office over the last 2 years, we moved some of the growth office functions inside the strategic market units, creating an even tighter integration with the SMUs. With this, we reinforced how we nurture large deals in each geography and we respond faster to changing market needs. Simultaneously, we continued to streamline our operations as per the plan. Leverage artificial intelligence and automation for efficiency across all functions and business areas. Add to that, the learning and development and reskilling of our existing talent base. Besides optimizing our talent pyramid to better serve client needs. Multiple initiatives are in place. I request Amit to share highlights of some of those programs with you today.

What I can say though, with confidence is that Wipro is a better partner for our clients today. We are more agile, when it is responding to and evolving with our clients and their needs. And it will also share with you highlights of the work done around account delivery and service excellence. This really is the centerpiece of our efficiency play and increased agility. We continue to invest in areas that we know are going to remain fundamental for our long-term success. People, our most valuable asset. We awarded our colleagues, their performance-based annual salary increases recently. The promotion cycle just closed and we'll be making the announcement soon. We've continued to stress on and offer training and development options and grow opportunities to our employees. This is critical to why people continue to choose to work with and give their best to Wipro. Of course, returning to work once again more regularly after a few years of fully remote work has absolutely helped energize the culture and the atmosphere in our offices. You can feel it today.

Then there is AI. Would be a miss not to share how we are using AI ourselves as an organization and, of course, for our clients. AI is now moving from, I would say, the curiosity and experimentation stage to becoming vital to business strategy. In fact, we can confidentially say that every long term, large deal now has an AI component. A substantial portion of our clients are looking for us to develop use cases tied to their business goals. They want us to use AI models to drive tangible results. AI is now embedded across most of our existing solutions and offerings. In addition, every business line is working to launch new offerings that use AI.

For example, in our full FullStride Cloud business, an area that's particularly hard when it comes to the use of Gen AI is digital workplace services. Leveraging Gen AI to lighten the load on service desks deliver faster and better client service is now part of every RFP in this space. One of our largest deals in Europe this quarter is to transform digital workplace services of a multinational telecommunications company. This will help improve client satisfaction, reduce operating expenses. We will build an AI-powered platform for them that provides service desk, on site and remote support services for 100,000 users and 80,000 managed services across 240 locations worldwide.

In engineering, we are seeing strong interest for AI in the automotive and manufacturing industries. Clients in these industries want AI to increase productivity in the R&D process and accelerate new product development. With Wipro enterprise featuring, we are helping clients accelerate adoption. We are leveraging Wipro's Gen AI framework and studio to develop key assets at all levels of the AI stack, including models, platforms and solutions. We will help clients with model development, performance, privacy and compliance. We're also building governance frameworks around responsible sustainable and ethical AI development because we are Wipro.

In fact, we are working with a global health care insurer to develop a Gen AI powered knowledge research solution to transform the contract center. The goal is to improve patient experience and operational efficiency by cutting the time it takes to analyze health care plan documents and response time. We have developed a Gen AI-powered assistant for a Fortune 500 investment and insurance firms. This assistant improves quality and reduces the time spent in crafting personalized e-mail campaigns. Early results showed tangible growth in click-through conversion rate. Additionally, expanding our relationships with strategic partners is definitely a critical part of our AI 360 strategy.

During the past quarter, we collaborated with NVIDIA to help health care companies build AI-driven strategies, products and services. This partnership with NVIDIA is a great differentiator for us given our domain expertise in the health care sector. We're also expanding our partnership with IBM to invest in new joint solutions built on IBM Watsonx. That makes it easier to deploy reliable, responsible and sustainable AI solutions. To do all this in a consistent, innovative, scalable fashion, we are preparing our workforce.

Today, 210,000 Wiproites around the world have trained on the AI 101 skills. We have now rolled out personal-based learning pathways for different roles and functions. Our goal is to ensure that every 1 at Wipro has the skills to fully leverage AI in their everyday work and for AI-related client projects, and it started with me. We are accelerating Gen AI adoption internally by integrating the technology across our entire portfolio of platforms. This is resulting in quality and productivity improvements across HR, marketing, sales, operations, as well as software development and quality engineering and testing.

Our investments in our AI 360 ecosystem, combined with the strategic value our consulting business brings to client is the reason we are increasingly the preferred partner for our clients. We are confident that we have the right vision, the right strategy and the right leadership to continue to grow and keep us competitive, resilient and ambitious.

Onto our guidance now for the next quarter. We are guiding for a sequential growth of minus 1.5% to plus 0.5% in constant currency terms. We expect margins to stay range bound like in the last few quarters as the market starts to turn around on the back of our transformation and efficiency plays we expect to see improvements in the coming quarters, absolutely.

With that, I'll turn it over to Amit for his comments. Thank you, everyone. Amit, over to you.

[Amit Choudhary, executive]

Thank you, Thierry. Hello, everyone. Today, I'll be talking about some updates on our business transformation as well as focused initiatives that have helped us to maintain our margin in the current demand environment. Our focus on the delivery excellence side continues to be excellent client experience and getting them best-in-class solutions. This is based on our now consistently leveraging our 4 global business line model to create the best possible ecosystem to build talent as well as deliver the best-in-class solutions for our clients.

This is being supplemented by strong delivery governance through an investment in our better program management by building the delivery leadership carder through focused training interventions, AI-based assessments and skilling for emerging technology trends. We have a dedicated AI delivery council to identify opportunities to infuse AI into delivery activities. Our account delivery executives are at the core of our client experience. We are enabling and empowering them to make decisions that are client-centric and with the client centricity in their mind. They are driving initiatives and solution offerings with AI first and One Wipro approach.

Another area of work has been the restructuring of low-margin accounts. Thierry talked about it briefly, especially in the context of our improved performance in the APMEA region. Low margin businesses are being reduced steadily through a multipronged approach. Moving to our operational excellence side. Thierry has spoken about how skill is our biggest currency. We are working on end-to-end processes to provide right skill at the right time at the right cost, at the right location. This we are doing through multiple initiatives that span across an improved forecasting process, proactively skilling through account academies pyramid optimization, improving our talent supply chain through an AI-powered talent marketplace, effort optimization, automation and strong change management. We are reducing our operating costs and optimizing our organizational design across all units and geographies. This is enabling us to build an agile Wipro better suited in this dynamic market.

We are heading towards more and more AI-based automation internally, resulting in productivity and better efficiency. Thierry talked about how we are taking AI-led solutions to our clients. We have a similar rigor for our internal facing AI applications like the AI-powered talent marketplace, persona-based learning pathways for our sales and business teams, our developers, our engineers and our architects. We are using AI for simplification of our employee user experience as well. We are aligning our operational structure, skilling academies and Gen AI capabilities to market demand, client expectations and ever-evolving internal Wipro processes. We are, in fact, the biggest customers or 1 of the biggest customers of our own AI internal ecosystem, AI 360 ecosystem. These transformation programs and margin-enhancing initiatives are delivering results. Our top priorities continue to be profitable growth, delivery excellence and internal capability development, all leading to sustainable success.

And now I hand over to Aparna.

[Aparna Iyer, executive]

Hello, everybody, and wish you all a very, very happy new year. Let me highlight to you our financial performance for the quarter ended December 31, 2023. We had a strong execution during the quarter, which has led to our revenues being at the top end of our guidance. In constant currency terms, our revenue declined 1.7% sequentially. As we had called out last quarter, we started the quarter with stiff challenges, one that of weaker demand, seasonal furloughs and salary increases for our employees effective first December 2023. I'm pleased to share with you that our margins have remained resilient as we executed on 3 counts: one, maximizing our revenue performance, realizing savings from pyramid improvements, and delayering and FPP productivity; and three, reducing discretionary spends.

On a year-to-date basis, we've improved our margins by nearly 63 basis points. We worked on rationalizing on all aspects of working capital and have generated about close to $600 million of operating cash flows during the quarter. This is 177% of net income and highest in the last few quarters. Our gross cash was at $4.6 billion, and our net cash was at $2.7 billion. Both have increased year-on-year despite completing a large buyback in July of last year.

Speaking of capital allocation, you would have read in the press release that our Board of Directors have declared an interim dividend of INR 1 per equity share. Our net income for the quarter is at INR 26.9 billion, which is a 1.8% increase quarter-on-quarter. Our EPS has increased by 2% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. In a weak revenue environment, it is heartening to note that our EPS has improved 2% on a year-to-date basis. Our EPS includes a charge that we've taken in our P&L on account of the restructuring exercise that we've undergone this year. I'd like to confirm that we've completed the restructuring that we wanted to do, and we do not anticipate any further charges henceforth.

In terms of other important metrics, our effective tax rate remained flat at 24%, and our hedges continue to be in line with our policy and was at about $3.4 billion.

Finally, I would like to reiterate the guidance of -- for Q4, '24 stated by Thierry. We expect revenues from our IT Services business segment to be in the range of $ 2,615 million to $2,669 million, which translates to a sequential guidance of negative 1.5% to a positive 0.5% in constant currency terms.

With that, we'll be happy to take any questions.

[Unknown Executive]

[Operator Instructions]

[Ritu Singh, analyst]

Okay. I'm Ritu from CNBC. A few questions on your numbers, starting with the revenue. Fourth quarter of decline that you've now reported despite all that positive outlook that you're telling us about. Even vertical-wise, barring a couple like health care, et cetera, you've seen a decline across the board sequentially. Europe has degrown by almost 4.3%. I wanted to understand, going forward, we have the Q4 guidance, of course. But what are the conversations with clients like what are they telling you about spend? What are the areas of concern that you see? What are the areas that you're optimistic about? Number two, also consulting since you've repeatedly highlighted is starting to see a turnaround. If you could give us more details on how Capco and Rizing are doing.

And how significant a role do you expect them to play when you say the market turns around? Again, I think just from January to December of last year, you've seen 8 significant exits in your senior management. You've sued 2 of your former executives which are joining a rival firm as well. How is that impacting the business here with senior leaders leaving the company? And if you could tell us a bit about what you're -- with Cognizant, we've seen 1 of your other peers also send a legal notice, what the conversation there has been like? And Finally, any levers for the margin to then get to that aspirational 17% level?

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

Okay. I'll try to remember every question. So the first one. So revenue. So let's talk about the market first. I think -- what do we see? The market hasn't changed dramatically, right? The market continues to be the market we have seen for the last quarter, which was a market where there was a significant reduction of the discretionary spend. And so we had, on the 1 hand, a certain volume of activity going on, actually showing up in our booking number and yet the lack of discretionary spend was hurting our top line growth in particular, in the consulting business, but across the board, in particular, in sectors like banking, financial services, technology, communications and so on.

What we are seeing now are green shoots. We are seeing a little bit beginning of an evolution of the market. And that is allowing us to -- we are seeing a positive trend in terms of revenue from a deceleration to almost stabilization and going back to growth. So that's the first point, I think.

And I -- frankly speaking, I believe the more I reflect on that, that when you look back we have grown, I believe, 27% year-on-year in FY '22. We've grown 12% year-on-year in FY '20, 11% or 12% in FY '23. And this year, we are decelerating. And I think it might just be a little bit of the hangover also of an exceptional period during COVID.

Yes, you are correct about what you are seeing in terms of growth. Healthcare is doing well, and there is a very significant demand. We are seeing some demand in some other industries like automotive, like energy, right? And possibly, an improvement of the banking sector. Certainly, what we are observing at the moment with Capco leads us to be a little more optimistic. So indeed, the performance in bookings of Capco has been very solid this quarter and rising as well. And we should -- we are observing -- we are cautiously observing the evolution. But I think I don't think this is something we would have said a quarter or 2 or 3 ago.

The point number 2 was on -- I don't know if I take them in order, but I'll do it. So on the leadership churn, it is part of our strategy. And we -- if you go back to our -- the strategy that we elaborated and shared with you back in October 2020, this was precisely part of the strategy around talent to acquire, to enhance, to grow, to build, to invest in talent and in particular, in leadership talent. So we are fully aware of the fact that this obviously is possibly triggering some people to leave. And this is part of the strategy. Today, what I can say is that, one, we have indeed tremendously invested into leadership over the last years. Second, we have a very strong leadership team today. Third, we have now a strong pipeline of leadership as well. And so that's where we are. Regarding specifically case you're referring to, I would ask you to cover it. And then I'll take the next point.

[Saurabh Govil, executive]

Yes. So simply put, when all of us join any organization, we have some contractual obligations. And we are, as an organization, across the industry, similar across the industry. are saying, please comply to the obligations. We are not against any individuals aspiring and growing and meeting their career goals. We are not against any individual going anywhere. It is about contractual obligations moving forward. And on particular case, since subjudice, we would not like to -- specific cases, we don't like to talk about.

[Ritu Singh, analyst]

What is the reason why you think there have been so many exits in just 1 year?

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

I try to respond to this question. It's -- we do not feel that way, what you're saying. But we realize that when you are bringing talent, we've been also promoting a lot of talent. It triggers a little bit of a churn and you must be prepared to that. If you are acquiring talent from the industry or other industries, if you are transforming the organization the way we've done over the last years, and if you're promoting as many talent in the organization as we've done over the last 2, 3 years, you have to be prepared to the fact that some people will decide to go. And frankly speaking, I wish them the best. It's okay.

We're not taking it, we are not destabilized by when there are decisions like this because we have the pipeline. May I embarrass my neighbor here, a minute, if you don't mind. To say that Aparna has taken over, we knew Aparna was the promising talent in the finance function, the most promising talent in the finance function at the senior level. Aparna has taken over the CFO role about a quarter ago, and she's doing fantastic. That is the power of the pipeline of talent that we have built over the years.

[Unknown Executive]

Can I please ask everyone to limit their questions to 2, please, so we can give everyone a chance.

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

Correct. Nevertheless, I don't know want to avoid questions. So I'll take the questions on margin. You had a question on margin expansion. Is it? Was it your question? So let me -- I would speak under the control of my CFO. So what I would say is, one, for the last 6 quarters, we've said that we would deliver within the same band and actually, we did, despite the slowdown, despite the revenue decrease. How could we do it? By working on our fundamentals, by becoming more agile, more efficient by leveraging technology, everything we've discussed earlier. We are now at a point where we are more confident to deliver this level of margins. As growth comes back, we are expecting some expansion. Thank you.

[Tushar Deep Singh, analyst]

Tushar here from NDTV Profit. A question for Thierry. IT services, as we have seen, has declined. The BFSI part of the business also has declined. U.S. contributed 61% of your business, but growth here is flat. Against that backdrop, how do you see FY '25 panning out for you in your biggest market?

For Aparna, a bit off, we know that the IT services margin is 16.0% from 16.1%. But if you just do the pure math a bit from your statement of accounts, we see that the EBIT margin is up 105 bps. So where is this actual gap happening? Just wanted to know.

Mr. Govil, your headcount is down. The attrition is at a 10 quarter low. Utilization is, I think, also decreased by 4 percentage points. Will you be undertaking hiring this year? Or are you still expecting your numbers to go down? And also on the hiring front, to anybody of you, are you going to get a new Chief Growth Officer?

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

Okay. So I'll take point number 1 and number 4, if you don't mind, and I'll give you point number 2 and number 3, okay? So for the first one, which is our outlook for FY '25, I'm going to disappoint you, it's a little too early to tell. And by the way, we are guiding only for a quarter. Look, January and February are typically months where we are getting a lot of better visibility on the budget of our clients, okay? So I am meeting clients every single day. And I will see many other of our clients in Davos next week, where we -- I'll get probably a better feel. But that's the most honest answer I can give you.

On the point number 4, which is around growth office. Let me explain the rationale. I'm the 1 who built the growth office and the reason for this was that we needed to fill a gap that was visible in the organization on several fronts. One, we didn't have people, we didn't have a team able to go after large deals. So we needed to build this team, build people who can go after large deals, so deals that are much more significant in size than what we were typically closing before. The results of that has been last year over the previous year, plus 70% this year, another plus 20%. So this is paying off. These teams have been built. They are working in every regions. We feel this is the moment for them to be rolled back now in the SMUs in the regions and work more directly with their regional teams, okay?

Second mission for the growth office was to build a true management of the partnerships. There was a fundamental disconnect at that time, way back in 2020 that if you look at the 6 largest partners of Wipro, they were generating less than 20% of the revenue of Wipro. So we have built a team. And today, it's close to 50% of our revenue, which I remind you, it's much bigger than the way it was 4 years ago, which is coming from our relation with partners. This relationship, this team, managing partners and ecosystem remain. Now regarding the leadership of the growth office. As you can imagine, there is nothing more important for me today that making sure we are back rapidly to growth. So I own it.

[Aparna Iyer, executive]

Yes. To your second point, when we say 16%, it refers to the IT Services segment results. What you're seeing in the face of the financials includes the IT products and the reconciling items. There, we've taken a restructuring charge, which is also having a play in the EBIT percentage, which I've confirmed that you will not see such charges henceforth.

[Saurabh Govil, executive]

So on the hiring front. Yes, the headcount has come down like the previous couple of quarters. In the demand-constrained environment, driving productivity, using technology, bringing in AI, improving utilization and our utilization has not gone down by 4%. We believe that we have enough capacity to grow. And as and when demand comes, we will continue to grow, even now for certain skills, specific technologies, we continue to hire. On utilization, if you see over the last few quarters, again, in a degrowth environment, we have improved our utilization. This particular quarter. It's a seasonal thing because we account for leave within that and being a high leave quarter because of the holidays, it's showing a marginal decrease. But the trend is there, and we believe that it's capacity for us to head space for us to grow it further, improve the utilization.

[Haripriya Sureban, analyst]

This is Haripriya. Thierry, could you give us some color on the deal ramp-ups and...

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

Can you speak a little louder?

[Haripriya Sureban, analyst]

Can you hear me now? Could you give us some color on the deal ramp-ups? Until last quarter, you mentioned about how the conversion is taking time. Do you see that changing now? Second, talk to us a little bit about the pricing part. Given that you said you're going for more complex projects, eying for better kind of deals in a highly competitive market like this, are you trading the margins for growth. And sort of, until last quarter, you said that we're still in the process of honoring all the job offers that were made. Is that done now? And is there any specific outlook for fresher?

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

Okay. So I'll take the first 2 questions. I hope I understood well what you asked. So on the first question, which is really about the conversion of deals into revenue I think if you look around the industry, there's definitely a little bit of a lag between the volume of the deals closed and the revenue are kicking in and I think the lack of discretionary spend, which are typically deals that are very small deals, but a large volume of very small deals are lesser in number are actually playing negatively in the growth versus the larger deals that obviously take time to kick in, but when they kick in, they go for good, okay?

So I think at the moment I would say the trend is positive, right? If you look at Q4 versus Q3, it's certainly going in the right direction. We can see, as I said earlier, that there's clearly -- we are trending towards going to growth over the next few months. And regarding the pricing or the margin profile of the deal we are going for. Yes, it's a strategic decision on our side to go for more complex deals, not because we like complexity, we do actually, but because we believe we can bring a lot to our clients, we have outstanding capabilities. We have deep knowledge of their priorities and their challenges. And we can truly do more than just deliver simple programs. Complex programs requires investment in capabilities, in discipline, in methods, in tools.

And this is what we've been working on and Amit as -- with his team, they've been working on reinforcing our capabilities around that. So that indeed, it drives a better margin at the end. And indeed, I think you've heard from us several times that we talk about portfolio rotation reduction of low-margin accounts and so on. This is what we've done precisely look at the portfolio and choose where we want to invest for better return on investment.

[Saurabh Govil, executive]

On the hiring front, we have today a talent pool available within as well as we have people whom we have offered. And as demand comes and as we have the requirements, we'll first dip in here and then go forth. So that's the way we'll approach, Hari.

[Unknown Executive]

I'm going to take 1 more question before we close.

[Sai Ishwar, analyst]

This is Sai Ishwar from Reuters. So Thierry, you spoke about a lack of conversion from revenue to -- deals to revenue. But are you seeing any project ramp downs or project cancellations? I wanted to ask on that. And also, a few weeks back, we saw a report saying that there is succession planning going on. You have identified 3 internal candidates. So you have just a year to go. So can you talk about the succession planning as well?

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

Okay. I'll do my best. Okay. So on the first point, which is the -- again, the revenue conversion, right? We haven't seen a significant ramp down. So let me correct that. I mean when we say less discretionary spend, it basically say a lot of the small discretionary spend that we were getting has reduced. And so that resulted in to ramp downs, not of accounts, but within accounts of streams or projects, okay? I would say this has largely gone now, right? So I think we haven't lost account. I'm not aware of any big account or big project that has been canceled.

And I'm seeing a little more first, ability and possibly a little bit resurrection of the discretionary spend. So that is on the revenue. On the succession planning, so I don't know which newspaper you're reading. But let me tell you 1 thing. It is my responsibility to make sure that we are building the proper succession planning. For my role, like for every other leadership role in the organization, and this is what I've been focusing on for the last years. All right? For the rest continue to read newspaper, you'll see.

[Saurabh Govil, executive]

Well it's fundamental, good organizations have a very good succession plan for all roles. So there's nothing which is -- on it's good about having that.

[Unknown Executive]

Ladies and gentlemen, we have to conclude our...

[Rukmini Rao, analyst]

We have a lot of questions.

[Unknown Executive]

All right. We'll take 1 more. Okay, 2 more. Can we have just have 1 question?

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

They really want to ask questions. Please go ahead.

[Poonam Gupta Maheshwari, analyst]

So Thierry, just around the lawsuits, we just want to get a sense on what is the reason that these lawsuits have been filed? And does that impact the morale of the company or the culture of the company? And as of now, what do you think is the impact, especially because this is focused largely against another rival. Do you see that changing mechanics for the company? Do you see that impacting because you've also given increments, is that 1 of the reasons for incentivizing employees? And what is the impact of the incentives that you've given, the increments on your margins? And what are the levers for the margins as well?

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

You guys come with too many questions, I'm struggling to remember everything. So let me start with what I believe I've heard. So 1, there's nothing personal or targeted in the way we are dealing with contract obligations. We are sticking to business practice. We've been in this business for 30 years. I know how this is working. We only apply those normal terms. And we are committed to our employees. We expect the same from them. That would be my first point. Second question was around?

[Saurabh Govil, executive]

Increment and the margins.

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

Margin levers besides growth, continue to improve the productivity of our organization, leverage automation and AI and price power, reinforce our position in account. Impact on increments, MSI.

[Aparna Iyer, executive]

So we are not calling out an impact in terms of operating margins, but our salary increases have been in the range of 6% to 8%, and it's in line with the industry.

[Saurabh Govil, executive]

We're not calling as she said independently the impact on [indiscernible].

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

You will have to do the math.

[Rukmini Rao, analyst]

Thierry, this is Rukmini Rao from Fortune India. I guess a lot of people here have been asking you about this legal notice that has been sent out. The entire issue around Jatin Dalal's exit, right? One, this -- because the last quarter when you spoke, you were very, very candid, amiable when you were speaking about Jatin's exit. And then a few days later, we see this legal case coming up. To the market, it seems like 2 things. One, it might be acting as a -- it's a deterrent where you're trying to tell the other people who spent so much time in Wipro that hey, look, you can't sort of -- the goodwill for having worked for 2 decades in Wipro it doesn't matter.

And two, probably Wipro is afraid that it won't be able to get the right kind of talent to fill in the people who are quitting the organization. I want to understand from you that these concerns and especially given that this step taken by Wipro, will it exasperate an existing problem of the senior management, senior leadership not having enough faith in perhaps the leaders who count. And two, the other thing is also about several questions being raised about you being able to sort of fulfill the term of 5 years. So I really want to understand what you're thinking on both these matters?

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

All right. So you said I was candid last time, I remain candid, okay? And there is nothing personal. Two, accept the fact that we are not commenting on personnel on individual cases. Three, there is absolutely nothing unusual in the way we have dealt with every case of exit over the last quarters in April. In fact, we accept that people leave the organization. There's absolutely no issue with that. And I've kept a great connect with many of them.

There's nothing wrong with that. There are legal obligations that need to be fulfilled. And it's not specific to Wipro. It's the same everywhere in the industry. Finally, you asked about renewal and terms. I'm guessing, I'm going to hear a lot about that until the end of the term. That's the nature of the role. Believe be clear of one thing. I'm focused on doing my job every single day. I'm enjoying it, and I'm committed to it.

[Rukmini Rao, analyst]

Can I -- 1 more question?

[Unknown Executive]

We're going to conclude, right? I'm sorry, I think we have to conclude. We are way over time. We really appreciate you being here today. This concludes our third quarter earnings press conference. I know there's a lot of other questions out there. Please reach out to our media relations team with your follow-up questions, and we'll be happy to assist you. Thank you, and we'll see you next quarter.

[Thierry Delaporte, executive]

Thank you.