WNS (Holdings) Ltd

NYSE:WNS

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q4

[Operator]

Good morning, and welcome to the WNS Holdings Fiscal 2024 Fourth Quarter and Full Year 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. David?

[David Mackey, executive]

Thank you, and welcome to our Fiscal 2024 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Earnings Call. With me today on the call, I have WNS' CEO, Keshav Murugesh; WNS' CFO, Sanjay Puria; and our Corporate Financial Controller, Arijit Sen.

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 fourth quarter and full year ended March 31, 2024. 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 this 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 impairment of goodwill and intangible assets.

We are also excluding costs related to our ADS program termination and costs associated with the transition to voluntarily reporting on U.S. domestic issuer forms. Adjusted net income, or ANI, is defined as profit excluding amortization of intangible assets, share-based compensation, acquisition-related expenses or benefits, goodwill and intangible asset impairment, ADS program termination costs, the transition to voluntarily reporting on U.S. domestic issuer forms and all associated taxes. These terms will be used throughout today's call.

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

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Thank you, David, and a very good morning, everyone. In the fiscal fourth quarter, WNS' business delivered solid results despite the very challenging macro environment. The company posted fourth quarter net revenues of $325.9 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 6.9% on a reported basis and 5.9% constant currency. Sequentially, net revenue increased by 3.2% on a reported basis and 2.4% on a constant currency basis after adjusting for foreign exchange.

Demand continues to be healthy for business transformation initiatives, leveraging digital and analytics while client volumes and project-based work remain pressured. During Q4, we added 9 new logos and expanded 40 existing relationships. New logos include 4 large technology-led transformational deals, which are expected to begin ramping towards the end of fiscal Q1.

In the quarter, WNS delivered adjusted operating margins of 22% and grew adjusted EPS by more than 8% versus last year. On March 28, the company completed the first step towards improving access to capital, exchanging our ADSs for ordinary shares. We are also on track to voluntarily shift from foreign private issuer status reporting under IFRS to a domestic filer status reporting under U.S. GAAP, in the fiscal first quarter of 2025.

These initiatives are expected to improve our ability to participate in the U.S. indexes and certain active investment funds and reduce share price volatility. Despite company-specific headwinds and the weak macro in fiscal 2024, WNS delivered top line growth of 10.5%, driven by our differentiated domain-focused strategy, maintained our industry-leading adjusted operating margins at 21.5% and grew adjusted earnings per share by 13.5%.

Other full year highlights include the implementation of our SBU organizational structure, the successful integration of 3 acquisitions, reduced corporate attrition, a healthy pipeline and good traction in large, digitally-led transformational deal signings.

During the year, WNS also continued to make the investments necessary to drive sustainable market differentiation and help our clients compete in a rapidly changing world. These strategic investments are designed to enhance our capabilities across domain expertise, advanced analytics and data management, and cutting-edge technology with a heightened focus on leveraging artificial intelligence as well as Generative AI.

In fiscal '24, we created a robust pipeline of use cases, built digital assets with Gen AI capabilities and successfully deployed customized solutions integrating AI and Gen AI across multiple service offerings and verticals. All of these solutions are underpinned by deep domain expertise and combine human intelligence and artificial intelligence to deliver business outcomes for clients that go beyond cost reduction. In fact, many of these use cases are focused on driving our clients' top line through new offerings, improved customer retention and enhanced quality of service.

During the year, we forged strategic partnerships with AI leaders as well as hyperscalers, including Microsoft Azure, OpenAI, AWS and Google, and continued to make progress in proactively hiring talent and training our global employee base on AI as well as Gen AI technologies.

WNS is also receiving positive recognition for our AI capabilities from the analysts as well as the adviser community, and last month was named a 2024 Artificial Intelligence Award winner by the Business Intelligence Group.

WNS was one of only 11 companies cited for having the products, culture and people consistently delivering innovative solutions in the Gen AI space. While it is clear that AI and Gen AI will be critical components of driving transformation and automation and delivering improved outcomes. It is also important to understand that clients are proceeding cautiously with enterprise-wide initiatives, given the many uncertainties that exist today.

Key concerns impacting clients' willingness to adopt and implement at scale include data quality and data privacy, underlying model bias, evolving regulations and costs associated with data preparation, technology setup and integration. This measured approach was confirmed in the recent Gen AI market impact report conducted by WNS and HfS, which solicited insights from enterprise leaders across industries and mirrors comments from the largest hyperscalers, global systems integrators and industry analysts. Despite these challenges, the company continues to believe that our ability to help clients properly leverage these technologies presents more opportunity than threat.

Today, in addition to working closely with clients on pilots, proof of concepts and customized use cases, we are also seeing AI and Gen AI improve the quantity and quality of conversations and increase focus and on driving collaboration, innovation, competitive differentiation as well as business outcomes.

In response to this evolving opportunity and the contraction in our share price, WNS accelerated our buyback programs in fiscal '24, repurchasing 3.3 million shares or almost 7% of the company's outstanding float.

Looking forward to fiscal 2025. Demand for digital transformation and cost reductions is healthy and our new business pipeline remains robust. WNS is extremely well positioned in several large industry-specific deals, focused on operating model transformation which have the potential to materially impact our fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026 growth rates.

That being said, our full year visibility today is challenged by the timing of these deals and macro weakness, which continues to impact business volumes as well as project-based work. In addition, as you are aware, the company announced on February 2, that a large health care client has notified us of their intent to terminate our contract for convenience. This cancellation, which will create a headwind of 3.2% to revenue growth in fiscal 2025, was driven by client changes in leadership, strategy and business model.

As a result, at this point in time, we expect revenue growth to be in the 0% to 5% range on an organic constant currency basis which assumes no improvement in volumes or discretionary spending during the fiscal year. We also expect our industry-leading margins to remain in the 21% to 22% range.

In fiscal '25, the company plans to repurchase up to $150 million of stock, given the current share price weakness. To do this, we will likely require shareholders to override certain proxy adviser recommendations and to vote against our repurchase proposal.

So again, I want to clarify that we expect proxy adviser recommendations to vote against, and we want your support to vote for these recommendations in an upcoming EGM planned for late May. We are requesting your support as the company believes the proxy guidelines of repurchase price maximums and program duration are just not practical given our share price movement over the past year.

This morning, WNS also issued a press release announcing an upcoming CFO transition. Sanjay Puria, who is with me today in London will be stepping down at the end of July for personal family reasons, but will remain with the company in an advisory role through the end of April 2025.

Arijit Sen, our current Corporate Financial Controller, will formally become CFO on the 25th of July of this year. Arijit has been with WNS for over 15 years, in progressively responsible roles, acting as Sanjay's right hand and bringing both company-specific experience and BPM industry expertise to the CFO function.

We will be introducing Arijit to our analysts and investors in the coming months. As a trusted partner to myself and the entire organization, I would like to sincerely take this opportunity to thank Sanjay for his 14-plus years of dedication, leadership and contribution to our success. Thank you, my friend, Sanjay, and my heartiest congratulations to you, Arijit.

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

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

Thank you for your kind words, Keshav. In the fiscal fourth quarter, WNS net revenue came in at $325.9 million, up 6.9% from $305 million, posted in the same quarter of last year, and up 5.9% on a constant currency basis. Sequentially, net revenue increased by 3.2% on a reported basis and 2.4% on a constant currency basis.

The sequential revenue improvement was driven by healthy demand for cost reduction focus initiatives and favorable currency movements, which were partially offset by volume reductions with certain clients and continued weakness in discretionary project-based revenues.

In the fourth quarter, WNS recorded $0.7 million of short-term, high-margin revenue. Adjusted operating margin in quarter 4 was 22% as compared to 20.6% reported in the same quarter of fiscal 2023 and 20.6% last quarter. Year-over-year, adjusted operating margin increased as a result of higher revenue, improved productivity and favorable currency movements. These benefits were partially offset by the impact of our annual rate increases. Sequentially, margins expanded as a result of higher revenue, improved productivity and currency favorability.

The company's net other income expense was $2.7 million of net expense in the fourth quarter as compared to $0.4 million of net expense reported in quarter 4 of fiscal 2023 and $2.8 million of net expense last quarter. Year-over-year, net interest expense increased due to $2.1 million of nonrecurring interest income on tax refunds recorded last year, and the combination of higher debt levels and lower cash balances driven primarily by our share repurchases.

WNS effective tax rate for quarter 4 came in at 21.5% as compared to 15.8% last year and 6.6% last quarter. Year-over-year, the effective tax rate increased as a result of $1.7 million of nonrecurring tax benefits booked in quarter 4 of fiscal 2023. Sequentially, the tax rate increase was a result of a onetime tax benefit of $9.5 million, resulting from the reversal of a deferred tax liability on intangibles taken in quarter 3, 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 4 was $54.1 million, compared with $52.4 million in the same quarter of fiscal 2023 and $58.2 million last quarter.

Adjusted diluted earnings were $1.12 per share in quarter 4, up from $1.04 in the fourth quarter of last year and down from $1.18 last quarter. As of March 31, 2024, WNS balances in cash and investments totaled $244.3 million, and the company had $179.2 million in debt. In the fourth quarter, WNS generated $67.6 million of cash from operating activities, incurred $10.4 million in capital expenditures and made debt repayments of $8 million.

The company also repurchased 1.2 million shares of stock at an average price of $59.62, which impacted quarter 4 cash by $71.5 million. DSO in the fourth quarter came in at 33 days, as compared to 32 days reported in quarter 4 of last year and 35 days last quarter.

With respect to other key operating metrics, total head count at the end of the quarter was 60,125 and our attrition rate in the fourth quarter was 33%, as compared to 40% reported in quarter 4 of last year and 29% in the previous quarter. We expect attrition to average in the low to mid-30% range, but the rate would remain volatile quarter-to-quarter in the current labor environment.

Build seat capacity at the end of the quarter 4 increased to 41,599 seats and WNS average 70% work from office during the quarter. I would now like to provide you with a brief financial summary for fiscal 2024 before discussing our outlook for the coming year.

Net revenue in fiscal 2024 came in at $1.284 billion, up 10.5% on a reported basis and up 9.9% on a constant currency basis. Acquisitions contributed just under 3% to the company's growth rate. Organic revenue growth was broad-based across geographies, services and verticals, and driven by spreads in both new logo additions and existing client expansion.

Revenue growth during the year was partially offset by ramp down in the health care business, the transition of a large Internet client from on-site to offshore delivery, softness in transaction volumes and macro-related reduction in discretionary project work. The company's fiscal 2024 existed operating margin came in at 21.5%, up 50 basis points versus fiscal 2023.

Margin favorability from operating leverage on higher volumes, improved productivity and currency movements was partially offset by wage increases and return to office cost. In fiscal 2024, net other income expense was unfavorable by $11 million as a result of increased interest expense on debt, high operating lease cost and reduced interest income driven by lower average cash balances during the year.

The company's effective tax rate for the year was 18.2%, down from 19.1% last year, as a result of a $9.5 million onetime benefit from the reversal of a deferred tax liability in Quarter 3 and changes in the mix of profits by geography and the percentage of work delivered from tax incentive facilities.

Overall, our full year adjusted diluted earnings per share improved 13.5%, coming in at $4.38. In fiscal 2024, WNS generated $229.2 million in cash from operations, spent $54.3 million on capital expenditures and made debt payment of $37.1 million. The company also repurchased 3.3 million shares of stock at a total cost of $215.3 million or $65.24 per share. We ended the year with a net cash balance of $65.1 million or approximately $1.35 per diluted share. Our global attrition rate reduced from 39% to 31%, work from office increased from 54% to 68% and revenue per employee expanded by more than 3%.

In our press release issued earlier today, WNS provided our initial full year guidance of fiscal 2025. Based on the company's current visibility levels, we expect net revenue to be in the range of $1.293 billion to $1.357 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 1% to 6% on a reported basis and 0% to 5% on a constant currency basis.

As Keshav mentioned, guidance factors in known client ramp-downs and reduced visibility to client volumes and discretionary projects. Guidance does not include short-term revenues, incremental revenue from our large insurance captive or an improvement in the macro environment.

Top line projection assumes an average British pound to U.S. dollar exchange rate of 1.27 for the full year. Full year adjusted net income for fiscal 2025 is expected to be in the range of $206 million to $218 million, based on INR 83 to U.S. dollar exchange rate. This implies adjusted EPS of $4.34 to $4.59, assuming a diluted share count of approximately 47.5 million shares. Excluding the $0.21 of onetime benefits to tax and interest income in fiscal 2024, the midpoint of guidance represents a 7% increase in adjusted EPS. With respect to capital expenditures, WNS currently expects our requirement for fiscal 2025 to be up to $65 million.

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

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Surinder Thind with Jefferies.

[Surinder Thind, analyst]

I'd like to start with a question about the forward guidance here. When putting that together, you talked about perhaps a healthy pipeline, but there's also maybe some -- what I would call, it sounds like increased lumpiness in terms of that pipeline or the potential for some large wins. Can you provide a bit more color there and how that compares to maybe historical pipelines at this point?

[David Mackey, executive]

Sure. Let me take that, Surinder. So I think when you look at the pipeline, as Keshav mentioned in his prepared remarks, the pipeline remains extremely healthy. What we have seen over the past year is a steady build in the number of large transformational deals that are in that pipeline.

So obviously, we've got a healthy amount of opportunities for small deals for client expansions. But what we are seeing is that clients are looking for transformational kinds of solutions that span multiple towers in multiple areas of their business, and those deals inherently are much larger and much more complex to deal with. As a result, the sales cycle for those deals tends to be longer.

Now again, what we're seeing is that clients are making decisions. They are moving forward. As Keshav mentioned, we closed 4 large deals in the fourth quarter alone. But I think part of the opportunity as we move forward into fiscal '25 and beyond, is that we're participating in several additional very large deals where we believe the company is extremely well positioned for success, and the timing of how and when those deals close and what our success rate is on those deals, could have a material impact on the back half of this fiscal year and fiscal '26.

So certainly, the big deals do create a little bit more lumpiness. But obviously, once they do close, create good visibility into long-term steady growth across a 2- to 3-year period.

[Surinder Thind, analyst]

And then as a follow-up, there's some commentary around just clients being a bit more cautious about adopting AI for a number of reasons, whether it's data quality bias, regulations, costs, tech stack. When you put all of that together and you look at kind of these big transformation deals, is that also impacting the decision-making in the sense that if you think about trying to enter into new contracts with new workflows, are clients hesitant to even commit because they're fearful that maybe AI solutions will change a year from now or some of the types of things that they're thinking about will be to be revisited. How does that work into the equation here in terms of the slowdown that we're seeing?

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Yes, that's a great question, a very deep question, Surinder. So I think the first thing I want to mention is that I think the current macros that we're all seeing and which has now extended for quite a while, is causing significant changes in terms of clients' own ability to plan, project. And along with that, business model disruptions that a number of clients or a number of businesses actually in the market are seeing, means that clients and prospects are looking at dipping their toes in the model or accelerating their journeys are taking much more time to get their arms around it.

That's really the core of how people are looking at some of these things and why going into the year also, we are also looking at our guidance very carefully. In our case, we've also had a specific situation with some specific clients that we spoke about, which are continuing to play out. But as Dave said, the large deal pipelines, 4 of which, more or less, already have been signed during the Q4, and many of which are in progress, actually, are the new opportunity we are seeing irrespective of where the macros are, irrespective of what pressures clients are going through because they all understand that with the big changes that are taking place in the world and the big changes taking place in technology and transformation and Tech and Ops kind of an environment, Gen AI or no Gen AI means they first have to take decision soon.

And therefore, people who have not actually dipped their toes in the model, or people who realize they have to be far more aggressive, actually, are engaging very well with us, right? And I think that's the core of the discussion here. On the one hand, while disruption and the macro issues causes some uncertainty, which I think will play out, it is also creating new opportunity for us.

And like I said before in my prepared remarks and as Dave said, the size of these deals are much larger. Now somewhere along the way, as people get comfortable with using some of these Gen AI models and getting comfortable that WNS is the right partner to help them navigate those opportunities, all of that will come to bear, but in our planning, we assume that when we introduce some of these offerings, it will cause some kind of revenue cannibalization for us, it will cause some kind of short-term impact. But in spite of that, we expect significant growth and profitability.

[David Mackey, executive]

I think just to add to that, Surinder, I think it's important to understand that when clients are coming to us, for transformational solutions, they are not looking for Gen AI specifically. What they are looking for are business outcomes. And they're looking for us to deliver those impacts, those outcomes to the business.

Now over time, we know they're going to hold us accountable for leveraging whatever the latest and greatest technology is. And in a year or 2, that may mean productivity coming from tools and technologies like Gen AI. But they also realize that they don't have 2 to 3 years to wait to see how that entire rollout will play out.

So clients are moving forward. But I think that the biggest issue here is the fact that clients are looking to do things that are transformational that are inherently disruptive to their business models, and that's really what's driving the length of the sales cycle, not which technology is going to be deployed to deliver those results.

[Operator]

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

[Bryan Bergin, analyst]

I wanted to dig in a bit more on the '25 growth outlook here. So coming off a year with some known client-specific headwinds, how did you think about building this outlook to potentially provide for more flexibility just given the uncertain environment out there? And can you help us with what incremental year-over-year headwinds may be factored across the portfolio as you enter the year through productivity and normal ramp downs?

[David Mackey, executive]

Sure, Bryan. Let me take a crack at that. So I think as we look into fiscal '25, what we're seeing today is about an 18% headwind to the business, right? Now we know that in a typical year, we're going to have a 10%, 11% headwind that comes from productivity, that comes from the known ramp downs, that comes from the short-term project-related work. I think as we look into fiscal '25, we've got another 6%, 7% headwind that we're dealing with, that's creating the big challenge for us.

Now I think most of us know and understand based on the conversations and the disclosures that we've made over the past 6, 9 months that 3% plus of that is coming from the large health care client that's terminated their contract. Another 1% is coming from the annualized impact of the large Internet client moving from on-site centric to offshore centric.

The piece that I think is different relative to where we would have been 3 months ago, 4 months ago, is really that deterioration in the visibility and the commitment levels that clients are willing to make to transaction volumes and to projects.

And that's probably cost us another 3% here. As Keshav alluded to, we're seeing that primarily impacting us in the travel and the insurance basis. But the reality is, I think the volatility in the macro environment has created challenges for our clients in projecting what's going to happen over the next 6 to 12 months. And we're seeing that manifest itself in the projections that they're providing to us.

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Yes, but I just want to add that while that's the state of the nation as of today, as we know, uncertainty is all around us anyway, that's also creating new opportunities. And I just want to underline the fact that a number of these clients are also, therefore, moving ahead with decisions which may take time to implement, but decisions on expansion in completely new areas where maybe in the past, they may have said, we'll hold on to some of these processes or operations ourselves.

We are also seeing that new prospects and new clients are moving aggressively in terms of wanting to get involved in much larger scale kind of interactions with us. Again, some of these things take time to close. But what I'm delighted to say is that in the last quarter, we actually closed 4 already, right? And therefore, our ability to do more of that, timing irrespective is high, which means this uncertainty is also creating a massive new opportunity for us, that should play out well in the second half and 2026.

[Bryan Bergin, analyst]

Understood. And I guess just given all the moving parts here, any important considerations for kind of quarterly cadence as you go through fiscal '25 on, I guess, both growth and margin?

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. Let me take that, Bryan. So I think, obviously, we know Q1 is typically seasonally soft for us. In addition to that, we've got the volumes that continue to ramp down. So we are looking at a sequential decline in fiscal Q1, probably in the 5% range.

And in addition to the productivity improvements that we give and the head count utilization challenges and the operating leverage issues that we're going to see Q1 margins, we're expecting to be in the 18% to 19% range. That being said, despite the large health care ramp down in Q2 and some of the challenges that, that will create, the expectation for us is that as we move across Q2, Q3, Q4, we should see good, steady acceleration in both the top line and the margin line.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

And maybe I'll just add what Dave has mentioned, because right now, some of the visibility, which is not there from a client perspective, and because of the seasonality in the quarter 1, where we expect the revenue to be lower than compared to quarter 4. And that mathematically also create a compression on the margin because of the operating leverage what we'll not be able to get that, right?

So the investment has been done for the scalability as we move forward for the growth, but it's going to be just a seasonal impact in quarter 1 because of that.

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. So just to reiterate, expectations in the neighborhood of like $310 million-ish for Q1 and the operating margin in the 18% to 19% range.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Nate Svensson with Deutsche Bank.

[Christopher Svensson, analyst]

I kind of wanted to talk about the mix of your bookings. Obviously, there's been a lot of focus on the shift towards larger deals and obviously, the pressure remaining on shorter project-based work. So I'm just thinking how this is impacting sort of average contract value? And how much of a change there has been kind of from your historical contract average -- annual contract value level versus what we're seeing now? So kind of just as an example, if you have $1 billion of bookings over 5 years, that's $200 million a year, but it's all short term, that would be $1 billion in one year. So just kind of trying to understand how that's evolved over time and any impact to the model going forward from the shift of larger conformational deals?

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. I mean it's a good question, Nate. I mean, clearly, what we've seen across the last couple of years is a meaningful increase in the average contract value and the total contract value of the deals and more specifically, the clients that we've signed, right?

So there's kind of 2 ways to slice that. One is when you're signing a new relationship, what does that initial value look like, right? So what we've seen is that clients are willing to take bigger bites on the front end, that ACV, TCV number is up meaningfully over the last couple of years. But we also have clients who proceed under a different route, right? They'll give us 1 or 2 statements of work to start the relationship. And then a year or 2 into it, they'll give us another 2, 3, 4, right?

So that's kind of the expansion side of the business. Both are extremely healthy. But to Surinder's question earlier, the large deal profile does create a little bit more lumpiness in terms of the visibility of how and when those revenues come on to the P&L. But very clearly, what we are seeing across the portfolio, and it's across verticals, it's across geographies, is that clients understand that the need for transformation and automation and cost reduction is best provided by multi-tower, multi-process types of solutions.

[Christopher Svensson, analyst]

My other question that I had was on head count growth. I think going back to last quarter, I think there might have been an expectation for maybe a slight uptick in head count growth in 4Q, but looks like there was actually about a point contraction in head count sequentially. So maybe given your new updated fiscal '25 guidance, sort of what are your expectations for head count, your need to grow sort of when you might have to ramp or how much you might be able to lean on utilization as opposed to head count growth? That would be helpful.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

So as we move for FY '25, we expect the head count to grow. It can be volatile a little bit between the quarters. But based on the seasonality, what we spoke about Quarter 1, you will see that the growth is going to be back half loaded accordingly, the head count growth is going to be there as we move forward to support that growth, not only for FY '25, but also start early ramp-up for FY '26 growth.

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. I think to Sanjay's point, what you'll see in the first half is while the overall numbers may remain somewhat static, there's going to be a mix shift going on under the covers. We've got ramp downs in certain verticals and certain types of services like we talked about with travel and with the health -- the large health care client. But offsetting that, we've got these 4 large deals that are going to be ramping up.

So you are going to see -- while the overall head count numbers look relatively similar, you're going to see under the covers, there are mix shifts going on that allow us to kind of support the changes in the business going forward.

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

And I wouldn't miss the opportunity to also talk about the fact that while all of this is happening, we are also implementing internally a number of tech-enabled kind of solutions that we are using to drive even more efficiency, deliver on the promises we made to our clients, continue to manage the margin requirements in a constrained macro and at the same time also ensure that as a result of that, manage the head count that may be required for the long term.

So with some of these solutions being deployed, what's happening is we're also moving some of our people to higher value kind of work. And some of this will also impact the headcount. So you should realize a number of moving parts.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Moshe with Wedbush.

[Moshe Katri, analyst]

Moshe Katri from Wedbush. Sanjay, good luck on your future endeavors. So I want to go to a couple of questions here. Can we get an update on the captive client? Where are we in terms of generating revenues, the phases, et cetera?

[David Mackey, executive]

Sure, let me take that one, Moshe. I think the short answer to the question is no change. At this point in time, we've been given about 25% of the Phase 2. We continue to engage with the client in discussing not only the rest of the transition for the Phase 2 work, but also new statements of work with that customer.

So we also know that they're not going to hit their 4-year, 5-year commitment unless they find new things for us to do. So actively engaged with this customer in terms of how and when we can get them moving forward with the rest of the Phase 2 work, but also actively engaged at this point in time with other streams of potential revenue for us to take -- to enable us to get to where we need to be 3, 4 years from now. Just to reiterate, none of that potential is included in our guidance.

[Moshe Katri, analyst]

Right. And then going back to fiscal '25 guide. As I understand, I just want to confirm that I understand that the right way. If we normalize guide, the guide for captive and the health care client disengagement. Together, it's about 6% to 7% headwind. Is that the right way of looking at it for this year?

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

You're right, absolutely. It's together around at 6% to 7%. I would say the health care, the captive as well as the Internet client from an onshore to offshore move, also together, it's going to be somewhere around 8%.

[Moshe Katri, analyst]

Understood. And then final one, can you talk a bit about what you're seeing in the travel vertical in terms of volumes? And then in general, can you remind us which part of the revenue base is actually exposed to more discretionary project work?

[David Mackey, executive]

Sure. So let me talk a little bit about the travel side and then get to the discretionary spend side. The pressure that we're seeing in travel is kind of across the board. I would say we're seeing it in the airline space, we're seeing it in the OTA space. And it's a combination of factors, to be honest with you, Moshe.

Some of it is macro-related where clients are experiencing limited growth. Some of it is that they had over hired or over projected recoveries coming out of the pandemic, and we're seeing rightsizing. Some of this is travel challenges within the corporate world, where we have, for example, a number of our OTA customers where we specialize in the corporate travel side as opposed to the retail travel side. So those have created challenges for us. And that's really -- I think, overall, what the story is relative to the travel space. It's customer-specific issues, it's macro-related issues, it's changes in strategy and business.

But at the end of the day, yes, we continue to see losses in terms of volumes. We're not losing customers, we're not losing ownership of processes, but what we are losing is transaction volumes within those customers.

On the discretionary project side, I think, obviously, we've seen that number come down when we did the acquisitions about 1.5 years ago. At peak, I would say the discretionary component of our business from a project perspective was around 12% of company revenue. That number today is probably down to just below 10% of company revenue. And based on the projections that we've currently embedded for fiscal '25, that number is probably coming down to like 8% of revenue.

So we continue to see this as a long-term opportunity as and when discretionary spend comes back. The businesses, the capabilities of these assets that we have, both in terms of the new acquisitions that we've done and in terms of our historical capability in areas like procurement and analytics are strong.

So we do see that as upside. But at this point in time, the visibility and clients' willingness to commit to those types of initiatives is very, very limited.

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Well, I must say that the green shoots coming out of all of this is while disruption on the macro issues are creating these impacts in travel, we are also seeing that they are extremely receptive in terms of our strategic messages, in terms of helping them where some of their other corporate functions take them much more nimble for the long term.

And in fact, some of the recent large deals that we are talking about actually come into sector for the future. So that is a very interesting development that we're also seeing. So these guys are all getting ready for the business to come back. And in the meantime, they're also looking at reengineering the internal functions as well.

[Operator]

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

[Mayank Tandon, analyst]

Keshav or Dave, I wanted to ask about the large deals. So as you approached the market, are you changing your go-to-market strategy in pursuing these large transformation type deals? Does that mean incremental investments in the sales force or how you go about comping your sales force? Any changes that you're making to make sure you win more than you lose in this type of market dynamic?

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Yes, Mayank, it's a great question. So first and foremost, I think the fact that our organization restructuring has all come together very well over the past one year or so. It's one of the very important reasons for the change in this dynamic, I must first say that because today, we go to the market with 4 very focused SBU units, right? And therefore, within those SBU units, we have strong leaders who can actually make effective decisions on what kind of sales talent they want, what kind of changes they want in terms of market orientation for some of these people and also making sure that the capabilities that we acquired over the past 4 or 5 quarters are also being integrated well when we go into having a business and a transformational conversation with clients.

It, therefore, means that a bunch of very smart people from within WNS, as well as a bunch of smart people who have been trained even more in a higher set of capabilities and another bunch of people who may have been hired in the recent past as well as the repositioning of talent across geographies is actually helping us with this strong pipeline that we are seeing, one.

Second thing is what we're seeing is our ability to have much higher-quality conversations around transformation, around digital, around analytics, around giving comfort that we are the right partner to help them navigate AI and Gen AI kind of outcomes when they are actually ready, is resonating extremely well. We are elevating all these conversations now to CEO, CFO, COO level on the other side. And therefore, the size of some of these deals being discussed are much bigger than what we have traditionally discussed before.

So that's core. So there are a lot of changes that are happening. But a lot of it, I would give credit to the acquisition strategy that this company has pursued. And more importantly, to the reorganization, which I think we have successfully now implemented.

[David Mackey, executive]

And just to add to that, Mayank, where the rubber hits the road, we're exiting fiscal '24 with a sales -- head count sales force that's about 10% above where we exited fiscal '23. So those investments have been made. Those investments were back-half loaded in fiscal '24.

So I don't think we've fully seen the benefits of this investment. But I think you're starting to, to Keshav's point, see it in terms of the successes we've had recently on large deal signings and the large deal pipeline that we have where the company is extremely well positioned for success going forward. So yes, the investments are taking place kind of behind the scenes to drive the pipeline and drive the success in selling these larger deals.

[Mayank Tandon, analyst]

And then as my follow-up, I wanted to ask about the capital allocation side. I know Keshav, you mentioned upfront that you're pursuing this large buyback opportunity, which makes all the sense, given where your valuation is, but would you also be considering M&A? Or do you have a lot to digest at this time with some of these headwinds you're tackling that might put that on hold? Any thoughts around that?

[Arijit Sen, executive]

So let me first introduce myself. As mentioned by Keshav -- this is Arijit by the way. As mentioned by Keshav, I've been with WNS for 15 years now, and a significant part of my [indiscernible] has been with Sanjay, so Sanjay's are big shoes to fill, but I'm sort of hoping I'm well trained to take over this role and move ahead.

Specifically to your question on M&A. M&A continues to be a very key component of our capital allocation strategy. Our M&A philosophy, as you would recall from our prior earnings calls, continues to be around addition of key capabilities in chosen areas of investment, areas like data analytics, digital and industry-specific competencies. We definitely have a very healthy M&A pipeline right now, and we are continuing to evaluate all of these assets based on the strategic fit and appropriate valuations.

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Yes, Mayank -- and thanks Arijit, that's a great introduction to the street. But I must tell you upfront that Mayank, we are going to continue to execute very well. We're super confident about our large deal pipeline. We are going to continue to focus on aggressive buybacks, like I spoke about because we think our stock is definitely it's not appreciated or undervalued at this point in time. And we will continue to invest in the business.

So we always spoke about a $65 million kind of CapEx program for this year, and we continue to invest in sales, marketing, in terms of creating new capabilities, and we will keep our radar on for looking at the right capability-led acquisitions that can keep enhancing our market positioning at a time when companies like us should be doing that to deliver the great outcomes for our shareholders over a period of time.

[Operator]

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

[Margaret Nolan, analyst]

So I think it's important to just clarify, the large health care client and the Internet client, obviously, those are different circumstances. Do you have any concerns that there might be something structural here to consider or whether there might be a risk of similar situations across the client base? Or are these more one-off in nature?

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. Let me take that, Maggie. I mean, look, I think the company has a very good track record of being transparent with issues and challenges within the business. And when we evaluate what's going on in these 2 instances, both with the large health care client and the Internet client moving from on-site to offshore, there's nothing within those 2 customer-specific decisions that we believe gives us pause or gives us concern relative to our other clients, other relationships, right?

Other than the fact that we understand that clients' businesses in this environment are being disruptive -- are being disrupted, I'm sorry, and that they're going to be taking decisions across everything that they do in order to manage that disruption, right? So if you really look at what's at the core of the large health care client, it's the fact that there are material changes in their business model, right? If you look at why the client on the Internet side move from on-site to offshore, they're still doing this work with WNS. It's not a change in vendor. It's not a change in strategy. It's a change in how they want those services to be provided and services to be executed.

So as a partner, we're going to have to be flexible to do what our clients want. But both of these situations, from our perspective, represent one-off types of scenarios. And we see nothing in them today that gives us concerns about other clients, other relationships or something structural either within the company or the BPM industry.

[Margaret Nolan, analyst]

And then on the strategic partnerships that you mentioned as your Open AI, Google, how are you starting to leverage these across your employee base and across your client base?

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. So obviously, in conjunction with the strategic partnerships that we've put in place, we've got very aggressive training, reskilling, upskilling programs that are underway within the company. And it's across all areas of the company.

So when you look at what we're doing functionally and cross-functionally within the company, focusing on trying to make sure that our teams from entry-level agents to senior leaders are thinking about and understanding how to leverage these tools and technologies.

And we are working with not only the hyperscalers and kind of the big name partners and providers there, but we're also working with other industry types of organizations and agencies in terms of supporting our training programs and training plans.

And we'll certainly be providing more of that, but across things like awareness, evangelism, practitioners for AI, thought leaders for AI, these are all areas where we've got aggressive training programs in place right now and leveraging organizations and institutions to help with these training programs, whether that's Google or LinkedIn Learning or MyMath Consulting or looking at universities like Oxford. These are all institutions that we have engaged with in our AI training programs.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Potter with Citi.

[Ryan Potter, analyst]

You talked about the 10% to 11% in normal headwinds as you enter the year? Could you double click on the productivity portion and provide some color on if you're seeing clients ask for higher levels of productivity, given the environment? Just trying to figure out if the macro or things like AI is maybe pushing clients to maybe ask for a higher levels of productivity than normal or at those also [indiscernible].

[David Mackey, executive]

Sure. Across the portfolio, Ryan, I think we've probably seen a little bit of a change, but nothing that's going to move the needle materially. I think the productivity improvements, the commitments that we're baking into our contracts are still in that 3% to 4% range. The reality is that while there's a lot of talk and a lot of conversation, and as Keshav spoke about in his prepared remarks, the use cases, pilots, proof of concepts, the reality is clients' willingness to leverage these technologies at scale across an enterprise is still extremely limited.

So to the extent that we're not able to deploy these tools because clients won't allow us to deploy these tools, the productivity that we're able to deliver today is still limited to traditional approaches, traditional tools, traditional technologies and our domain expertise. We certainly believe, and we've said it multiple times in the past that as these technologies and their adoption improves, that we believe that productivity number can continue to creep up.

But the reality is that we believe it should also be offset by an increase in the opportunities for us to get into new areas of our existing customers' portfolios. And as Keshav has mentioned multiple times today, the ability to bring new people to the table.

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

Yes. I think it's important to just underline this because I think with all of these new technologies and all this excitement being created about some of these new technologies and new models, first and foremost, the potential penetration of new white spaces for the industry, I think, will be increasing.

There will always be some parts of the existing industry that will go through massive change that we'll see. I'm calling it disruption, I'm calling it maybe affected by macro issues, but also it is getting clients much more focused on what they want to invest in against what they want the partner to be focused on and invest in.

And so when Dave spoke about how we are training and getting our people ready, it is also because a number of our clients and prospects are telling us openly that, listen, we want to focus on our core business, and we would like to work with a trusted partner like you who's training their people, who's getting all of the models in place and who can deliver the ROI that we need. But it's also allowing us to move up the value chain, go into white spaces which traditionally this BPM industry may not have addressed in the past. I think that's the exciting opportunity for the next decade or so.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

And maybe, I'll just add that just taking a step back, with the multiple technology evolution, as Dave was talking about around 3% to 4% productivity. If you recall earlier, it was just 1% to 2% productivity, right? But with the technology evolution, that increased to 3% to 4%, but it also increased the expandable market, and that is where the net-net growth just kept on climbing up. So I think there are multiple of those examples going to the entire evolution of this technology, and that is where we believe that it's going to continue to drive and help us to address the white space what Keshav was alluding.

[Ryan Potter, analyst]

Got it. I'm not going to [indiscernible] into, I guess, some of the opportunities in the large deal pipeline that you talked about. But I just want to be clear if some of the assumptions around the large deal opportunity, are those included in the outlook or do they represent potential upside to the outlook? And then I guess on top of that, what kind of success rate have you had in these types of large deals? And do they tend to have different ramp times for cycles than some of your more traditional deals?

[David Mackey, executive]

Sure. So let me take a crack at that, Ryan. I think from a success rate perspective, obviously, we think we're doing extremely well. For the deals where we have the domain expertise where we're well positioned, I would say, we're winning more than our fair share of deals. And obviously, having 4 large deals kind of in the bag at this point that were signed in the fourth quarter and having in the pipeline today, 7 or 8 opportunities where we believe decisions could come in the next 2 to 3 months, these are exciting things for us because we believe we're extremely well positioned in terms of capability, in terms of solution, in terms of relationship to win these deals.

Are they somewhat more lumpy, kind of going back to Surinder's question earlier, yes, these deals are a little bit more lumpy because the timing is a little less certain than, for example, an expansion of an existing relationship or a small F&A process that we take over, so I think there's a little bit of that uncertainty.

Relative to the guidance, I think when you look at what we've done here, we have not specifically said, hey, we've baked in 7 large deals, and that's how we've gotten to where we are. The reality is we know that there is a business that needs to be signed as we progress throughout the year.

We believe we've been realistic in terms of our ability to close that new business relative to what we've been able to do in the past, relative to what's in the pipeline today, but it's not specific to large deal signings versus expansion signings versus the potential for a macro, right? These are all potential sources of filling that gap. But we don't say specifically, okay, if we don't sign these 3 large deals, we're not going to be able to make our numbers.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

And maybe I'll just add to what Dave was mentioning, basically, as -- based on the pipeline, these are at various stages of the discussion, and it can be large deals, it can be multiple other new prospects, what we are discussing, expansion.

So based on the stages of where they are and the probability what we internally follow, is the mix of all this stuff, what becomes the basis for our guidelines. But as some of the large deals may get close and if the transition is going to be at a much faster pace, maybe some of those things may change, and that is where it helps us also to move the upper range of the guidance.

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. It's a little tough to kind of nail down, right? And I guess that's kind of the commentary around lumpiness. We've signed 1 large deal here in the fourth quarter that's going to ramp very aggressively, at least, that's certainly kind of what the plan is right now. But as we discussed, for example, with the captive carve-out 1.5 years ago, there's a second phase to that deal that was contractually committed that's still moving slowly. So it's going to be client-specific. And there's no rhyme or reason to that other than organizationally, whether or not they're ready to take on that change.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Puneet Jain with JPMorgan.

[Puneet Jain, analyst]

Quickly on the Internet and Tech clients. Can you talk about like how large those clients are and what the outlook is?

[David Mackey, executive]

So if you look kind of across the portfolio, Puneet, Internet and Tech clients today represent about 17% of company revenue. But certainly, when you look at the expectation for this year, some of the volume pressures especially relative to, for example, the travel vertical, some of the volume pressures that we expect this year will be in that area.

Obviously, we had a large Internet client last year that's bled into this year, moving work from on-site to offshore that's created some headwinds there. But I think where we're comfortable at this point in time is that when you look at our exposure to Internet-based clients and you look at that 17% of revenue, what you'll see is that we don't have meaningful exposure to any one client anymore at this point.

So part of the upside, if you will, if there is any, of some of the challenges and the pressures that we've had on the volumes over the last year or so and relative to the guidance for fiscal '25, some of the -- the good news, if you will, is that I think we've derisked the ability for any one single client to have a meaningful impact on what our numbers look like for fiscal '25 and beyond.

[Puneet Jain, analyst]

Got it. And also, if you can talk about like the head count reduction you had this quarter. It seems like it's been a while since your head count was down on a sequential basis. So if you can double click on like the technology that helped reduce head count dependency as well as what should we expect for head count over the near term.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

So Puneet, Sanjay here. So again, head count reduction is a mix of various initiatives, including the quarter 1 seasonality, what we saw and what we alluded that it's going to be -- revenue is going to be lower as compared to quarter 4. So that's causing that. And also if you recall, the impact of our large health care client is going to start from Q2, right?

So those are a couple of the things which are impacting but driving technology, interventions, to drive the productivity and those on. So it's a mix of various things around it. But as we move forward, and as I mentioned earlier, from an FY '25 perspective, the growth is going to be back half loaded and accordingly, we expect the head count to keep on growing from Q2 onwards.

[David Mackey, executive]

Yes. And I think relative to the deployment of technology and automation, what you've seen, and Sanjay mentioned it in his prepared remarks, what you've seen pretty consistently from WNS is that each year, we're delinking the growth in revenue from the growth in head count by anywhere from 2% to 4%, right? So this year, on a constant currency basis, we had about a 3.5% change in revenue per employee, right, which is kind of where this is really manifesting itself.

And I think that should be expected going forward that we should see disconnects between the number of people we need to deliver revenue and net revenue growth in the 2% to 4% range. Obviously doing much more than that in any given year is going to be very, very difficult as clients migrate to these new models and to these new types of services and solutions. But that productivity improvement that we're able to deliver is part of how we are able to keep our margins stable, right?

I mean if we're giving 3% to 4% productivity to clients, we've got to continue to do more work with fewer people in order to be able to maintain our margins. And this is part of -- when we talk about productivity from a customer side, yes, it creates a revenue headwind, but this is productivity from the operations side that allows us to reduce cost at or above the same rate as we're reducing revenue.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Vincent Colicchio with Barrington Research.

[Vincent Colicchio, analyst]

Yes. Are you seeing any pricing pressure in any of your horizontals?

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

No. At this stage, not -- no pricing pressure. I think as we discussed earlier also, the focus is all about the total cost of ownership instead of [indiscernible], our traditional model. So it's all going to be about the solution, the value creation, what we are able to create for our client. So no pricing pressure at this stage.

[Keshav Murugesh, executive]

And in fact, we are seeing a very solid pipeline build with some of these horizontals. So we believe the verticals will benefit with some of the pipelines being generated through these horizontals, which are now integrated well post the restructuring that I spoke about.

[Vincent Colicchio, analyst]

And then just one last one here. I know we're getting late on the call. What caused the large sequential increase in transaction contracts? Is there anything to call out there? Transaction-based contracts, the percentage contribution increased quite a bit sequentially.

[Sanjay Puria, executive]

I think the transaction-based contract, the increase sequentially, what we have is the movement of one of our clients, which was on the cost plus kind of a model. They have just changed the model to their transaction base as we move forward. Again, it's going to be more around those technology interventions and the larger aspect what we are working upon.

[David Mackey, executive]

What you'll see, Vince, if you look, is that you'll see kind of on a percentage basis, a corresponding reduction in the outcome-based revenues. So essentially, what we did is we had a large customer that moved from one type of an engagement model to another.

[Operator]

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