WNS (Holdings) Ltd

NYSE:WNS

Earnings Call Analysis

WNS Expects Strong Revenue Growth in Fiscal 2024

WNS reported a solid third-quarter performance, with a 7.8% year-over-year increase in net revenue to $315.9 million. Despite facing challenges such as the transition of an offshore delivery account and a dip in project-based revenues, they managed to offset these partly through demand for cost-reduction initiatives. The company has revised its fiscal 2024 guidance, expecting a 9% to 11% growth in net revenue, falling between $1.270 billion to $1.292 billion. Additionally, WNS anticipates full-year adjusted net income to be between $212 million and $218 million.

Financial Performance and Projections

The company faced a challenging third quarter, with adjusted operating margins falling to 20.6% compared to 21.9% in the same quarter last year due to increased return-to-office costs and wage increases. Nonetheless, adjusted net income grew year-over-year, reaching $58.2 million from $50.6 million, demonstrating resilience and the ability to maintain profitability in a difficult cost environment. The guidance for fiscal 2024 shows a bright outlook, with net revenue expected to hit between $1.270 billion and $1.292 billion, signifying a healthy growth of 9% to 11%, despite currency fluctuations, notably a pound-to-dollar exchange rate assumed at 1.27. Adjusted net income is projected to fall in the range of $212 million to $218 million for the fiscal year. The diluted earnings per share are expected to be between $4.27 and $4.39, based on a share count of roughly 49.6 million.

Operational Resilience

Operationally, the company has shown robust cash management and an aggressive share repurchase program, which is set to continue in the fourth quarter. They reported $260.4 million in cash and investments against a debt of $177.4 million. The company remains productive with operating cash flows of $73.7 million and responsibly managing capital expenditures at $10.3 million. They are committed to keeping debt levels in check, shown by significant repayments of $20.2 million. The proactive capital management strategies echo the company's shareholder-friendly policies and prudent fiscal responsibility.

Client Relations and Business Offerings

Business development strategies revolve around leveraging domain expertise and digital transformation capabilities to cater to clients' evolving needs. The firm continues to focus on creating customized solutions while also developing reusable components for broader application across the client base. Such strategic investments underline the company's preparedness to serve emerging market demands with a blend of proprietary and flexible solutions, enhancing client reliance and fostering long-term partnerships.

Client Project Delays and Guidance

The management addressed temporary delays from a large client project, reassuring investors of commitments being received for the continuation of phase two, indicating potential revenue realizations in the upcoming quarters. They insisted that opportunities to penetrate further into that client's business remain high, offering a positive outlook for future engagements and possible upticks in revenues.

Outlook Amid Unusual Headwinds

The company stresses that despite recent stumbles due to unique challenges, their efforts interweaving changes in organizational structure and heightened strategic focus on sales and farming will build a strong growth pipeline. They see potential for revenue growth reacceleration in fiscal 2025 while focusing on maintaining their operating margin around the 20% mark. Additionally, despite the industry and global economic pressures, the demand for the company's core services suggests a stable platform to leapfrog into accelerated growth once the transient headwinds subside.

Strategic Acquisitions and Valuations

Mergers and acquisitions remain integral to the company's growth strategy, emphasizing capability creation. Management discloses that valuations have normalized over the past two years, creating a conducive environment for potential acquisitions. The company retains an opportunistic approach, eyeing assets that comport with their strategic goals, culture, and financial rationale. The executive commentary implies liquidity and a controlled acquisition strategy poised to enhance the company's capabilities and services portfolio.

Impact of Gen AI and Digital Transformation

Gen AI, an innovative tool for digital transformation, has begun attracting new clients and expanding market share with existing ones. The tool's introduction has had negligible negative impacts on revenues. The company's stance indicates that as more process components shift to tools like Gen AI, margin levers will increase. The prospects of moving toward non-FTE models, such as outcomes or subscription-based models, bode well for improving margin profiles and making client relationships stickier, with the anticipation of higher margins on non-FTE business components.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Good morning, and welcome to the WNS Holdings Fiscal 2024 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes.

Now I would like to turn the call over to David Mackey, WNS' Executive Vice President of Finance and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[David Mackey, executive]

Thank you, and welcome to our fiscal 2024 Third Quarter Earnings Call. With me today on the call, I have WNS' CEO, Keshav Murugesh; and WNS' CFO, Sanjay Puria. A press release detailing our financial results was issued earlier today. This release is also available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.wns.com.

Today's remarks will focus on the results for the fiscal third quarter ended December 31, 2023. Some of the matters that will be discussed on today's call are forward-looking. Please keep in mind that these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors set forth in the company's Form 20-F. This document is also available on the company website.

During today's call, management will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe provide useful information for investors. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP results can be found in the press release issued earlier today. Some of the non-GAAP financial measures management will discuss are defined as follows. Net revenue is defined as revenue less repair payments. Adjusted operating margin is defined as operating margin, excluding amortization of intangible assets, share-based compensation, acquisition-related expenses or benefits and goodwill impairment. Adjusted net income, or ANI, is defined as profit, excluding amortization of intangible assets, share-based compensation, acquisition-related expenses or benefits, goodwill impairment and all associated taxes. These terms will be used throughout the call.

I would now like to turn the call over to WNS' CEO, Keshav Murugesh. Keshav?

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. In the third quarter, WNS' financial results were largely in line with our expectations. The company posted third quarter net revenue of $315.9 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 7.8% on a reported basis and 5.9% constant currency.

Sequentially, net revenue decreased by 2.8% on a reported basis and 2.3% on a constant currency basis after adjusting for foreign exchange. As discussed last quarter, the sequential reduction was largely the result of the delivery transition for a large Internet-based procurement client from on-site to offshore, lower travel volumes and softness in our project-based revenues.

Overall, from a demand and booked revenue perspective, there were no major changes or surprises during the third quarter. Travel volumes reduced during the quarter particularly for domestic online travel. While some of this is a function of normal seasonality, we also saw volume reductions in our high-end business-to-business customer experience portfolio. This, we believe, is attributable to both corporate travel spending and client-specific issues.

In addition, demand for WNS' project-based work, including hyperautomation, procurement and analytics projects, saw a slight sequential decline in Q3 and remains below the levels expected in a healthy macro environment. While certain volumes and project work have reduced, demand for our core process management initiatives continues to be healthy, driven by client requirements for process automation as well as cost reduction.

Our new business pipeline is robust and clients are moving forward with strategic initiatives. During the third quarter, WNS added 8 new logos and expanded 32 existing relationships. I'm also excited to announce that we have now received a commitment from our large insurance captive relationship to proceed with a portion of the Phase 2 plan. This new process is expected to begin ramping later this quarter.

Today, I would like to provide you with a brief update on our AI as well as Gen AI initiatives as we continue to build, design, implement solutions for our clients leveraging these technologies. The pipeline of Gen AI use cases continues to expand across our verticals as well as service offerings, and we are making steady progress moving these initiatives forward with our clients.

Today, we have secured client commitments for Gen AI implementations which span verticals, including insurance, retail, CPG, travel, shipping and logistics as well as banking and financial services; and represent horizontals such as procurement operations and customer experience.

In some of these examples, the Gen AI solution has been a catalyst for new business, including customer additions and expansions of existing relationships. For others, Gen AI is helping transform the existing book of business and drive improvements that previous solutions were unable to deliver.

At WNS, our approach continues to focus on combining our deep industry expertise with Gen AI to deliver enhanced levels of performance, accuracy and business value which is differentiated and superior to generic Gen AI applications.

For example, we currently have an existing client implementation leveraging a powerful new WNS proprietary Gen AI decision support engine, which enables our agents to quickly access relevant information from large numbers of complex, lengthy documents and then synthesize and summarize the results to meet the customers' requirements.

The solution, which combines the power of human intelligence as well as artificial intelligence, is positively impacting most key business metrics, including reduced handling times, improved accuracy and higher first call resolution rates. For our clients, this is improving end user satisfaction and increasing revenue retention. For WNS, the solution is revenue-neutral, margin-accretive and resulting in additional process management opportunities. We are also excited to highlight that this Gen AI decision engine is scalable both horizontally as well as vertically across WNS.

We are also pleased to announce that we are now upgrading Malkom, our intelligent automation platform, for the shipping and logistics industry with Gen AI capabilities. The updated version, now called Malkom AI, is designed to revolutionize the way incoming data sources, including e-mails, chats, messaging, web portals and EDI, are processed. The enhanced platform enables cognitive extraction and routing of data to specific workflows within our clients' organization as well as IT systems, which in turn either fully automate these workflows or flag them for human validation and completion as is needed. Malkom AI now demonstrates WNS's capability to leverage deep industry expertise and process knowledge in the application of Gen AI and other cutting-edge technologies.

Overall, we continue to see Gen AI as a long-term catalyst for our business. Our investments in this, as well as other new technologies, and our ability to combine these powerful tools with domain, people and process is generating increased interest from both existing clients as well as new prospects. These tools are enabling WNS to improve both the quantity and quality of client discussions with the focus increasingly shifting towards innovation, competitive positioning as well as value creation.

In addition, we have seen strong willingness from these clients to share in the financial and operational benefits of our Gen AI solutions. So for WNS, this includes the ability to capture new revenue streams, shift the commercials from FTE-based models to stickier, higher-value managed services and outcome-based models as well as improved margins.

I would also like to share with you some activities in progress designed to help improve our ability to compete for capital. In our press release issued earlier today, WNS announced that we have formally transitioned a company to 3 global headquartered locations in New York, London as well as Mumbai. This change supports the company's decentralization of senior leadership as well as decision-making as highlighted by our organizational structure change announced in April 2023. These headquarter additions also reflect the company's financial and operational evolution over the past 25 years, including the geographic diversification of our revenue mix as well as delivery footprint.

In addition, earlier this week, WNS' Board of Directors granted approval for the company to move forward with plans to convert our ADSs to ordinary shares. The company intends to complete this exercise prior to the end of fiscal first quarter 2025.

The WNS Board has also granted approval, and the company intends, to voluntarily shift from foreign private issuer status reporting under IFRS to domestic filer status reporting under U.S. GAAP. This change is expected to be implemented prior to the end of fiscal second quarter of 2025.

The company believes these actions are in the long-term best interest of all WNS stakeholders. Key objectives include improved access to capital through the ability to participate in the U.S. indexes and additional active investment funds, reduced share price volatility as well as enhanced governance.

In summary, despite the challenging macro environment and certain nonrecurring headwinds in fiscal 2024, WNS now enters fourth quarter with more than 99% visibility to double-digit full year revenue growth and continues to expect industry-leading stable margins for fiscal '24. We also remain optimistic that our growing pipeline for core automation as well as cost-reduction based services and reducing headwinds set the company up for accelerated growth in fiscal 2025.

WNS continues to invest in technology, analytics and domain to ensure our competitive differentiation remains intact, enabling the company to deliver long-term sustainable value for every one of our key stakeholders.

I would now like to turn the call over to our CFO, Sanjay Puria, to further discuss our results as well as outlook. Sanjay?

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

Thank you, Keshav. In the fiscal third quarter, WNS net revenue came in at $315.9 million, up 7.8% from $292.9 million posted in the same quarter of last year and up 5.9% on a constant currency basis. Sequentially, net revenue decreased by 2.8% on a reported basis and 2.3% on a constant currency basis.

The sequential revenue reduction was driven by the offshore delivery transition of a large Internet account; volume reductions with certain clients, primarily in OTA travel; and weakness in discretionary project-based revenues. These headwinds were partially offset by strong client demand for cost-reduction focused initiatives. In the third quarter, WNS recorded $0.5 million of short-term revenue at company average margin.

Adjusted operating margin in quarter 3 was 20.6% as compared to 21.9% reported in the same quarter of fiscal 2023 and 22.4% last quarter. Year-over-year, adjusted operating margins were pressured by annual rate increases and return-to-office costs. This headwind was partially offset by improved productivity and favorable currency movements.

Sequentially, margins decreased as a result of wage increases, higher SG&A expenses driven by quarter 2 provision reversals for performance incentives and bank debt and lower revenue. The company's net other income expense was $2.8 million of net expense in the third quarter as compared to $1.2 million of net expense reported in quarter 3 of fiscal 2023 and $3.6 million of net expense last quarter.

Year-over-year, net interest expense increased due to higher debt levels and lower cash balances driven by our acquisitions and share repurchases. Sequentially, the favorable [ de-ramp ] was a result of interest income on tax refunds, sale of assets and slightly lower interest expense. WNS' effective tax rate for quarter 3 came in at 6.6% as compared to 19.8% last year and 22% last quarter.

In the fiscal third quarter, we realized a onetime tax benefit of $9.5 million resulting from the reversal of a deferred tax liability on entitlements. Both year-over-year and sequentially, other changes in our effective tax rate was the result of shifts in our geographical profit mix and changes to the mix of work delivered from tax incentive facilities.

The company's adjusted net income for quarter 3 was $58.2 million compared with $50.6 million in the same quarter of fiscal 2023 and $54.1 million last quarter. Adjusted diluted earnings were $1.18 per share in quarter 3, up 18% versus $1.01 in the third quarter of last year and up 9% from $1.09 last quarter.

As of December 31, 2023, WNS' balances in cash and investments totaled $260.4 million, and the company had $177.4 million in debt. In the third quarter, WNS generated $73.7 million of cash from operating activities, incurred $10.3 million in capital expenditures and made debt repayments of $20.2 million. The company also repurchased 1 million shares of stock at an average price of $58.13 which impacted quarter 3 cash by $58.1 million. Our revised full year guidance assumes WNS will continue with our share repurchase program in the upcoming fiscal fourth quarter. DSO in the third quarter came in at 35 days as compared to 34 days reported in quarter 3 of last year and 35 days last quarter.

With respect to other key operating metrics, total headcount at the end of the quarter was 60,652 and our attrition rate in the third quarter was 29% as compared to 28% reported in quarter 3 of last year and 30% in the previous quarter. We expect attrition to average in the low to mid-30% range, but the rate will remain volatile quarter-to-quarter in the current environment. Filled seat capacity at the end of the quarter 3 increased to 40,658 and WNS averaged 69% work from office during the quarter.

In our press release issued earlier today, WNS provided our revised full year guidance for fiscal 2024. Based on the company's current visibility levels, we expect net revenue to be in the range of $1.270 billion to $1.292 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 9% to 11% on both reported and constant currency basis. Top line projection assumes an average British pound to U.S. dollar exchange rate of 1.27 for the remainder of the fiscal year, and we currently have over 99% visibility to the midpoint of the range.

Full year adjusted net income for fiscal 2024 is expected to be in the range of $212 million to $218 million based on INR 83.3 to U.S. dollar exchange rate for the remainder of fiscal 2024. This implies adjusted EPS of $4.27 to $4.39 assuming a diluted share count of approximately 49.6 million shares. With respect to capital expenditures, WNS currently expects our requirement for fiscal 2024 to be up to $60 million.

We'll now open the call for questions. Operator?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Surinder Thind with Jefferies.

[Surinder Thind, analyst]

I'd like to start with a question on just kind of demand environment and more specifically just the volume aspect of the business. Can you maybe talk a little bit about how client volumes have evolved relative to expectations maybe 6 months ago when we first started seeing signals of clients wanting to slow down? And then what are the current client conversations as we look forward maybe 6 months at this point?

[David Mackey, executive]

Sure, Surinder. So I think if you look across the last couple of quarters, what we've seen and what we had included in our guidance was expectations from our clients; projections from our clients; and for certain clients, especially in the travel space, commitments from these clients to reducing volumes. And historically, when we've seen that kind of a trend from customers, they've proven to be extremely conservative. What we've seen over the last couple of quarters is that those numbers have come in much closer to their projections and commitments than what we've seen in the past.

So as a result, we have not been able to recognize upside relative to volume and relative to our forecast and guidance during that period. So essentially, at the end of the day, the volume projections that they had provided us would prove to be accurate and good.

I think the good news and the upside is as we look forward into the fourth quarter, we are not seeing clients continuing to drop those forecasts and those projections. So our hope at least at this point is that the volumes have stabilized at these levels. And then as we move across into fiscal 2025, we have upside if we see some macro benefits out there.

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

And I'd just add that while that was a great explanation on the volumes of the current business. The other fact to also mention here is that we continue to see a lot of interest in terms of existing clients as well as new prospects continue to have very positive discussions in terms of longer-term strategic plans for both transformation, cost savings as well as implementation of some of the Gen AI kind of tools that I spoke about earlier. So I think right now, it's a mixed bag, but it looks exactly like what we said it was likely to be as of last quarter.

[Surinder Thind, analyst]

That's helpful. And then as a follow-up, when we think about your AI strategy, the platforms, the tools, the technologies that you want to build, the question here is how truly differentiated can you build some of those products? And how bespoke is that to kind of the client solutions that you build? And maybe how much is reusable? And then, I guess, overall, do you have to accelerate spend to, I guess, win the arms race for AI here? How do we think about all of that dynamic?

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Yes. I think I'll take a stab at that answer first. So first and foremost, I think we are very clear that this is a movement that will only keep gaining traction. And our job right now is to make sure that our clients see us as a responsible partner leading them in this charge. So many of them may not yet be completely ready to get on this band because some of the current stresses that they're seeing are more focused around profitability, volumes, things like that.

So from our point of view, giving them the comfort that we are training our people, we've got the right partnerships in place, we have invested very strongly in the tools, and their required technologies; and that some of the solutions that they are used to seeing from WNS are all being enabled through AI and Gen AI tools, is something that is being seen as very positively.

The second thing that they are all seeing very positively is the intent from WNS to look at our core business, understand which are the areas that actually need faster implementation of some of these tools so that we are more partner-like to our clients. And even if it means cannibalization of short-term revenue for us, they have understood the intent from a WNS point of view is to do that in order to build very strong long-term sustainable relationships with them.

So if you look at the current stage, it is all about building out completely new tools, creating these partnerships and enabling existing tools through Gen AI. In many cases, we use the base tool that is available and then create something which is bespoke for a particular client. But most often, we also have the ability to reuse quite a few of these tools.

So when we are talking about some of these branded tools that I spoke about earlier, our ability to use them across multiple clients while incurring a onetime cost at the start is high. And therefore, our ability to have high-quality relationships or discussions with our clients in terms of how to share that cost or the opportunity in the first case is also built on trust as opposed to just plain opportunity.

[David Mackey, executive]

And I think just to add to what Keshav said, Surinder. At the end of the day, clients are looking for digital transformation. And the reality is that Gen AI as a tool is only one component of what they're looking for. So we continue to believe that our key differentiator is domain expertise. The ability to understand the client's business, to understand the client's problem; and leverage process, leverage people, leverage technology, whatever the technology might be, to solve that problem.

And to Keshav's point, certainly, certain components of that solution have to be customized and proprietary to that specific client. But at the same time, we're also creating reusable components that we can bring across the entire portfolio. So I think the approach actually works well and plays into the strength of where this company has made our investments over the last 10, 15 years.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Bryan Bergin with TD Cowen.

[Bryan Bergin, analyst]

First one I have, just as it relates to the share class conversion, the voluntary file or status shift. Are there any notable financial implications from these items to be aware of as you transition next year? Just really anything to be aware of around maybe tax structure? And from an accounting change, anything dramatically different versus potentially just the hedges up top moving?

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

No. So there are no financial implications, specifically for moving from areas to the common stock over there, even from a tax structuring or -- the structure remains the same. It is just from taxes of the capital and reduce the volatility from a share volume perspective, those are the prime objectives. But primarily, no financial impact.

[David Mackey, executive]

There will be changes to some of the financial metrics as we transition from IFRS to U.S. GAAP based on exactly what you were referring to, how the 2 different standards treat certain types of transactions and certain types of costs. But the reality is, to Sanjay's point, there should be no change from the conversion from ADSs to ordinary shares.

[Bryan Bergin, analyst]

Okay. Very good. And then as it relates to the headquarter additions and the growing global diversification, can you just kind of discuss the margin implications from these changes? Do you have any difference in view on the medium-term potential and adjusted operating margin?

[David Mackey, executive]

They're already embedded in our structure. There should be no change as a result of anything that we've discussed today relative to the approach to capital access.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Spencer Lebov with Wedbush Securities.

[Moshe Katri, analyst]

Can you hear me?

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes, we can hear you now.

[Moshe Katri, analyst]

It's Moshe Katri from Wedbush. A question, can we get an update on the captive client, specifically the delays or the pause that we've heard about last week? And then I have another follow-up.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

Yes. So as in the remarks, what we mentioned that last quarter, there was a delay over there. But the good news, as we move forward, we already got a commitment of the portion of the Phase 2 from that client. And we will be starting the delivery from the later part of the quarter 4. And as we move forward to discussions or further on for the balance portion of the Phase 2, which may be there as a part for the next 12 months.

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. I think just to reiterate what Sanjay is saying. Obviously, a lot of concern and consternation out there about the delay. And as the company had said last quarter, we still believe that it was a question of when, not if we were going to get this piece of business. All the indications from the client were that they were going to continue to move forward with this process addition. And it was nice to see they're taking steps in that direction, tentative steps.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

And just to remind, again, that there's a part of the overall commitment from the client. So as Dave mentioned, it's all about when, but it need to happen during the tenure of the contract.

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

To mention -- sorry, I just want to mention one thing, that some of these conversations are mostly about transformation as well as cost savings. Now based on how well-prepared a client may be on some of these larger initiatives, they can only delay that much. Thereafter, based on the macros, based on the business need, it's just smart for customers to actually move ahead with these journeys.

So I just want to mention again that while over the last 1 or 2 quarters, we've saw these delays, we are also quite confident that not only will they come back in terms of Phase 2 of this particular transformation. But the opportunity for WNS to go deeper into many more areas with this client is very high over the next few quarters.

[Moshe Katri, analyst]

Okay. So that's definitely a positive development. So there is a go ahead. Some of those -- some of that revenue generation will be recognized towards the end of Q4? And then there's Phase 2 that gets recognized in fiscal '25. Is that the right way of looking at it?

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

Yes, you're absolutely right. It's going to be minimal revenue during this financial year. But as we transition, it's going to be the more the year of FY '25 when most of the revenue start recognized.

[David Mackey, executive]

I'm sorry, Moshe. And the hope also is that basically continue to give us the additional components of Phase 2 as we move throughout fiscal '25 that also contributes above and beyond what we've been awarded at this point.

[Moshe Katri, analyst]

Okay. Sorry, just to go back to this. Can you remind us what is the potential run rate from this specific captive client?

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. We talked about last quarter, the delay in pushing that revenue out of our fiscal '24 financials, costing the company almost 2% of revenue.

[Moshe Katri, analyst]

And that's been -- some of it is getting pushed out to fiscal '25?

[David Mackey, executive]

Well, in our last guidance, all of it was pushed out. The majority of it is still going to be pushed out because we're not recognizing anything until later in this fiscal fourth quarter. But the good news is, because we're starting in the fiscal fourth quarter, we should have a higher run rate of revenue in fiscal '25 from this award.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

So maybe Moshe, I'll just help you with that. And as Dave mentioned, it was a 2% which got impacted for this fiscal year. Out of that, what we have been awarded is 25% of that now, and which is completely awarded and which we'll be able to recognize in FY '25. But at the same time, the balance, 75%, still, there's an opportunity which we are working, which will help us during the next fiscal year.

[Moshe Katri, analyst]

Okay. Great. Final question. Since May of last year, again, someone decided that WNS is exclusively going to get impacted by Gen AI, right? Any indications that any of those -- any of that kind of prophecy has materialized in terms of your revenue base, cannibalization, et cetera? Just to be clear.

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Not at all. Actually from our point of view, voluntarily, like I said earlier, wherever we think the clients will benefit by embracing Gen AI, even if they are not ready. We are going in, having those conversations, building deep connections with our clients and building out plans that will help us grow net of the cannibalization at a level that the industry expects.

[David Mackey, executive]

But to be very clear, Moshe, in terms of what we've seen to date and what we've embedded into this guidance, there has been 0 negative impact to our revenue from Gen AI.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Maggie Nolan with William Blair.

[Margaret Nolan, analyst]

Congratulations on all the developments. I wanted to ask about the project-based work and whether you have any changes in expectations over the next couple of quarters, just given that clients are starting to kind of finalize their budgets for calendar '24.

[David Mackey, executive]

Sure. I'll take that, Maggie. I think as we talked about, we did see that some of the softness that was projected and committed from clients did materialize here in the third quarter. The good news again is that when you look at the fourth quarter numbers, we're not seeing a further decline in that expected project revenue, and it doesn't mean that it couldn't happen.

But at this point in time, it's our belief that the project run rate has somewhat stabilized here. And to the extent that we don't take another leg down in the macro where we don't see a meaningful pickup in the macro, this is probably going to be the sustainable level for project-based work for us.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

And maybe we'll have more color because January is the time where the client's budgets will start getting further for the next fiscal year. And some discussions have already started based on that. So we'll be able to maybe have a better color when we provide updates for the next quarter.

[Margaret Nolan, analyst]

And then you -- I mean, you have a great track record of posting strong margins, and you continue to do so. But there are a lot of moving parts with volumes and project-based work, and you mentioned this new product that's margin-accretive. So I'm hoping you could maybe help us think through some of the puts and takes on margins even into fiscal 2025.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

So you're right from those moving parts perspective. But there's a lot of variable cost associated from a business perspective. And though volume keeps on moving up or down quarter-over-quarter, and accordingly, we are able to manage those costs associated with that due to the variability. So accordingly, we believe that as we keep on investing into our business, as we keep on seeing some of the volatility in the volume, about 20% margin, operating margin, what we have been consistent in delivering, and we expect to continue with that.

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. I would totally just reiterate what Sanjay said, that we do continue to believe that these margins are stable, and there will continue to be puts and takes in terms of wage increases and the ability to improve margins as we continue to transition this business towards transaction, outcome, subscription-based models and deliver higher value for our customers in those models. So the expectation of the company continues to be that 20% to 22% range for adjusted operating margin moving forward.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Nate Svensson with Deutsche Bank.

[Christopher Svensson, analyst]

I wanted to touch base on something that came up in the prepared remarks, and it's about the potential for reacceleration in revenue growth in fiscal '25. So I think a few other questions earlier have kind of gotten at this point, whether it's the insurance captive ramping next year or expectations for project-based work. But I kind of just wanted to hear about your confidence or your visibility into that potential reacceleration next year, particularly given sort of volumes and short-term work is stable to slightly down in this environment.

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Yes. So I'll take that. So I think the first thing is we continue to be positive about the potential for growth in our business, right? We think that the macros, while they are causing pressure at this point in time and have caused pressure probably this whole year and will continue to be weak as we are hearing from the economists for the next few quarters, will also push customers to want to now start taking decisions that go beyond just the core business transformation agenda and go much more into cost savings in order to be smart about how they're running their businesses. One.

The second thing is our change that we made in terms of our org structure has now been digested well, has been understood well by the market, and that is actually now starting to evoke much higher quality and even better conversations with a lot of prospects as well as our existing customers. We actually think, over a period of time, that will also start evoking higher benefits for the company.

The third thing I will say is that, with other changes that we made around our sales focus, farming focus, as well as creating specific crack teams to go after some of these things, we are actually seeing higher-quality conversations on larger-sized deals, which, again, we believe may take time to actually see decisions. But actually the number of deals entering the pipeline, the quality of the discussions we are having and the level of connects that we are now generating around these deals will actually deliver a very strong pipeline for growth longer term.

And therefore, from my point of view, I continue to see the business being very positive. I continue to see long-term tailwinds. I continue to see the BPM industry being underpenetrated and huge potential for us to go after the white spaces that need penetration. And with the change in our org structure, our clients and prospects are interacting with us in a far superior way that we saw even 2 years ago.

[David Mackey, executive]

The other thing I would add to Keshav's comments, Nate, is remember that the biggest challenge that we have this year relative to growth are the unusual headwinds we have in our business. And to the extent that we've got 5%, 6%, 7% headwind to our business that has nothing to do with macro, that has nothing to do with projects, that has nothing to do with volume, right? To the extent that these are unusual types of things, as long as demand stays healthy for our core services, the ability to accelerate growth should really be there for us in fiscal '25.

[Christopher Svensson, analyst]

Great. That's super helpful color. I really appreciate the detailed answer. I guess for my follow-up, can you share what the inorganic impact was in the quarter, particularly versus what your expectations had been? The reason I ask is I know Vuram had been sort of highly tied to short term sort of discretionary project work and you had sort of the reversal of the contingent considerations last quarter. So I was just wondering if we could get an update on how OptiBuy and Smart Cube have been performing.

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. I mean, overall, obviously, they're performing below expectations relative to when we purchased these assets, but they do continue to perform above company average in terms of their contribution. So don't want to mislead from the standpoint of saying that these aren't healthy and well-performing assets. But in terms of the contribution on a year-over-year basis, from -- to revenue growth, you're looking at a little over 2% year-over-year.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Kyle Peterson with Needham.

[Kyle Peterson, analyst]

Great. This is Kyle Peterson on for Mayank. I wanted to start off here just on some of the puts and takes of what you guys are seeing. I guess there's obviously been some macro challenges over the last couple of quarters, but you guys do help streamline operations, reduce costs. So I just wanted to see if you guys could kind of walk through how some of those client conversations are going. And what's the impact and focus on questions between some of the discretionary spend versus cost savings and efficiency initiatives?

[David Mackey, executive]

Sure, Kyle. I think overall, and Keshav alluded to it in his prepared remarks, right, I mean, there are kind of 3 components to the revenue portfolio in terms of what we're seeing.

One is kind of those core cost reduction, automation, transformation requirements that clients have. The second are discretionary projects where -- by definition, it's got a fixed start and fixed end, and clients need to pay upfront for the benefit as opposed to paying as they go for the benefits that they receive. And then the third is volume, which is essentially the number of transactions that are getting pushed through the processes that we already own and manage.

And obviously, as we've talked about, some of it's specific to certain verticals and some of it's specific to certain processes. We've seen pressure from both a discretionary spend perspective as well as from a volume perspective in certain verticals and subverticals.

That being said, the core business, which for us represents almost 90% of our total, where what we're driving for the client is tangible business benefit, whether that's cost reduction, whether that's revenue generation, whether that's loss/leakage prevention, right? That piece of our business remains extremely healthy. That's really been the driver for the upside this year. And again, this is reason that growth from this company is below normal, it's more about the headwinds to our business than the demand for our services.

[Kyle Peterson, analyst]

Great. That's very helpful. And then just a follow-up on the M&A pipeline. You guys made a couple of acquisitions here in the last few years. But how are you guys thinking about potential targets, how conversations are going and where valuations stand in this environment?

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Yes. So I'll just mention that we continue to be -- we continue to look at assets in chosen areas that we are interested in. Like we have said before, for us, it's all about capability creation. So the core around M&A really is, if there is some new capability that we can bring in, that would be really our focus.

Valuations, we believe, are very much under control over the past 2 years or so. And therefore, our ability to be productive and constructive in this area is high.

We do constantly look at a number of some of these assets starting from small to midsized to sometimes even a much larger-sized assets also in order to make sure that our team is scanning the market very carefully and then giving us the insights to make a decision. Having said that, we will not do anything that doesn't make business sense for us. So the timing of any future M&A activities and stuff like that, can't comment on. But I can only tell you that we are being very constructive.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

Yes. And I'll just add over there. There are multiple of those capability acquisitions, what we focus and target upon are in various stages of discussion at this stage. Adding a specific point from a valuation perspective. In fact, earlier, the valuations were actually over high and now it has come to proper, reasonable level. And that's what we are seeing in various of our discussions with various of the targets which are interested which are in discussions.

[David Mackey, executive]

That being said, Kyle, the approach from the company remains the same. We're going to be opportunistic. We're going to find assets that have the right capability, that are the right cultural fit and then are at the right price. And if those opportunities aren't available in the market, we're not going to do acquisitions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Mina Mafi with JPMorgan.

[Mina Nezam-Mafi, analyst]

This is Mina on for Puneet Jain. I have 2 quick questions on Gen AI. The first is that you mentioned that Gen AI is kind of drawing in new clients as well as expanding your market share of existing. Are these new clients first-time outsourcers or competitive takeaways? And are these projects still more in the discovery stage or getting into implementation?

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Yes. I think that's a great question because one of the things that we are seeing is, with the existing portfolio, our ability to have these conversations obviously is high. But because they are used to doing things in a particular way, they take a little longer to climb on the bandwagon of Gen AI because there has to be a significant change management process that has to be implemented, even with an existing process.

But with a lot of the first-time outsourcers with whom we're having a lots of these conversations, their ability to get into this model upfront is much higher. And that's where we are having -- we are quite excited about the fact that, while we are implementing and experimenting with a lot of these solutions with our existing clients, the ability to take them into some of these new conversations and lead with Gen AI solutions is also very high.

And I can tell you that at this point in time the pipeline of sales is very strong with some of these first-time outsourcers. And in many of them, it is Gen AI-led solutions and some of the platform-based solutions that I spoke about where the core of the discussion is happening around.

[Mina Nezam-Mafi, analyst]

Great. My other question was just that you guys have stated you have -- you expect a structurally higher margin profile as you guys are shifting more towards outsourcing, and have also mentioned that these Gen AI projects are coming in at higher margins. How much higher are the Gen AI projects? And is it significant enough to also structurally, I guess, shift your margin profile and raise it?

[David Mackey, executive]

At this point in time, Mina, when you look at the quantum of work that's been shifted to Gen AI, it's extremely, extremely small, right? We've talked about a handful of very small projects that we've implemented and parts of processes that we've leveraged these tools on for existing clients at this point in time.

So this is going to be an evolution like everything else. I think the opportunity that tools like Gen AI present and the need for digital transformation presents is the ability to shift clients from FTE models to non-FTE models. And we know that when we're able to move to either a transaction or an outcome or a subscription-based model, the margin levers that we as a company have at our disposal are significantly higher.

So what we want to do is we want to lock in that customer, we want to take ownership and accountability for results. We want to move to a model where we take ownership and accountability for those results and therefore make the relationship stickier. But at the same time, give us multiple margin levers to be able to drive improvement. And what we see in our current portfolio is that the margins on the non-FTE component of our business are meaningfully higher than the FTE component.

So that's really where the opportunity for margin expansion in the space comes from. It is the evolution to higher-value services and to higher-value models to deliver those services. And Gen AI is just one component of that. But we do believe it has the potential to help serve as the catalyst for that move.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Ashwin Shirvaikar with Citi.

[Ashwin Shirvaikar, analyst]

Congratulations on the good quarter and the rapid resolution that you guys have with the client. Let me just ask about the ADS to general shares transition, and apologies if I've misinterpreted this, but have you sized the impact of things like the ability to now be on an index once you complete the process, the number of incremental investors who can now look at WNS that didn't used to be able to before? That might have been what you meant by access to capital. But in terms of just investor flows, I kind of feel like that can be very significant levels of buying. But have you done that analysis?

[David Mackey, executive]

Sure. Let me take that, Ashwin. Obviously, we've done several assessments of what the potential opportunities are across the entire -- both institutional and index capabilities for us. And you're right, the opportunity is meaningful. The reality is we know there are no hard and fast rules, that we need to continue to demonstrate the right structure, the right metrics, the right approach to be able to access those funds.

So at this point in time, to be able to say we definitively know that these certain things are given, I don't think we can do that. I think what we can say with certainty is that what we're doing here certainly positions the company much, much better to have access to those funds. And obviously, if you look at our shareholder portfolio today, sitting here with 2% of our shares held in index funds, this has been a major deficiency for the company over the past several years.

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

So Ashwin, I think I would like to take a higher-level stab at this question, to answer this question. If you look -- I mean, notwithstanding where the macros are and how demand is playing out at this point in time. If you just step back maybe a year or 2, you will see that we have taken a view that the tailwinds for this business continue to be very, very high, for the sector itself and for WNS in particular. There is the ability for us to continue to lead and grow and grow faster than the industry, and that's really where our focus is.

We believe that the market penetration levels for BPO continue to be low. And therefore, with some of the changes taking place in the world around us, including AI, Gen AI and some of the other conversations we've been having over the last few quarters, the ability for smart companies to lead is very high. WNS is one of the smart companies that will gain its space.

And while we're doing all of this, you will see that we -- in order to prepare for all of this, we have made some significant changes. We made an organization structure change in order to be even more nimble, flexible, rightsized and innovative and attentive of our customers. That organization change has now settled in well. We have absorbed a number of leaders across the company, added a number of new leaders that have come in, got very comfortable with this.

Our customer base, prospect base is very aligned around this new org structure. The implementations that we have done around technology as well as AI, Gen AI and some of the things that I've spoken about the last 2 or 3 quarters are starting to resonate well. Although like Dave said, at this point in time, the revenue impact for us on all of this is minimal. But we believe it will keep cashing out, right?

As a result of all of this, the conversations that are now starting with prospects are emerging at much larger-sized conversations, larger-sized deals that we think over the next few quarters, will emerge as proper run rate events for this company. And when we do all of this, we therefore think the potential for this company to access capital, manage our capital allocation program appropriately as well as allow the investor base to participate in this growth story in a constructive way has to be done. And that's one of the reasons why we've done all of this.

Now in terms of sizing of the opportunity, I can tell you like Dave said, 2% of our equity is owned by the indices. And you know that when you look at the peer set and you look at others, a significantly larger part of their holding actually are indices. So we actually believe that some of these funds as well as other stakeholders deserve to own the WNS stock. And as management, we are doing whatever is required behind the scenes to make sure that everyone is part of our long-term growth of success growing. So that's really where this conversations is headed.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

And maybe, Ashwin, I'll just add over there that if you see the evolution from a WNS-specific perspective, right, because the other question is what the timing, right? Why is the time? Why it was not earlier? And so on. And this whole diversification, whether it's from a revenue perspective, whether it was from the market, where especially on the North America, the structure change what we just spoke about to support that entire growth, this is how it has been evolving over the years. And that is where we believe that this is the right time for the company to really move ahead with some of these adjustments.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The last question comes from David Koning with Baird.

[David Koning, analyst]

Yes. Great job.

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Thanks, Dave.

[David Koning, analyst]

Yes. And just a couple of quick ones. So first of all, the health business, obviously still declining with the transition. But we've had 4 quarters now of a pretty similar decline, which implies Q4 hits a dramatically easier comp. And I guess, the real question here is how fast is that growing ex the transition? Really so we can kind of get an understanding of how fast Q4 could grow kind of -- and going forward?

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. Let me take that, Dave. Obviously, we know in fiscal Q4 of last year, we took a significant step down and we lost a large health care process with one of our clients. .

If you look at the challenges, for example, in the health care vertical this past quarter, it was actually on the analytics project work. So part of what we've seen here in the last quarter or 2 is some softness relative to the project work and the analytics work in that vertical and subvertical for us, specifically in the pharmaceutical space.

But you're right. I think we're getting to the point now where those headwinds anniversary. And to the extent that we've got stability on the project side, we should see Q4 sequentially step up, and we should start to see a reacceleration of that year-over-year growth.

[David Koning, analyst]

Okay. Great. That's exactly what I was looking for. Good. And then the second thing, just employees grew over 1% sequentially. The last couple of quarters were flat. That seems like a pretty good sign. Often, stocks start going up when employees grow. Maybe what's behind that? I mean, is there a lot of just confidence that you need to start building the employee base again just to keep up with accelerating growth?

[David Mackey, executive]

Sure. Let me take that one, Dave. Obviously, we fully expected this question given the fact that our headcount went up in the quarter while revenue went down. And the reality is, when you look at what we see going forward, when you look at having over 99% visibility to healthy sequential growth from Q3 to Q4. What we didn't want to do is get caught in the situation where we were letting people go and then rehiring them a quarter, 1.5 quarters later.

So part of the reason margins were a little soft this quarter because we carried excess resource. When you look at revenue per employee in the quarter, it was weak. And the reality is we were willing to do that and willing to absorb that in terms of the overall margins for the full year, maintaining this 21.5% kind of a range, absolutely willing to do that given the visibility that we have to growth going forward.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

And also just to add, when we spoke about the large insurance client from a quarter 4 perspective, we are in the Phase 2, where their transition work will start. So it's preparedness for some of those also as well as some of the other visibility and the growth, what we are seeing. So yes, absolutely what we have mentioned, that it's just -- it was a matter of timing. And also the mix changes, right, because the skills are different from a different business perspective. And accordingly, we have just balance quarter-to-quarter from that.

[Operator]

At this time, we have no further questions in the queue. This will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.