GFT Technologies SE

XETRA:GFT

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am [ Shari, ] the Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining today's conference call on the Q1 figures 2023 of GFT Technologies SE. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Andreas Herzog, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Andreas Herzog, executive]

Well, thank you, operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining our call today on GFT's financial figures and business development for the Q1 2023. With me is our CEO, Marika Lulay; and Jochen Ruetz, our CFO.

Both will guide you through our numbers and will, of course, be available for your questions afterwards. Some final housekeeping remarks. This webcast is being recorded, including the Q&A session that will be available as a replay on our website in the Investor Relations section. They will also find the corresponding slides for them. So thanks for your attention. This should be enough from me, Marika, the stage is yours.

[Marika Lulay, executive]

Thank you, Andreas. So also a warm welcome from me, ladies and gentlemen, to our Q1 earnings call. And I'm actually very proud to share that despite the challenging economic environment, we were able to stay on track in our growth path in Q1 in revenues as well in earnings. Also, we reconfirm our guidance unchanged for 2023. And this actually proves that our positioning as a leader for digital transformation and modernization of mission-critical applications pays off.

Yes, we see more headwind than in 2022, but our expertise in technologies like cloud, blockchain, DLT, and AI, auto-generative AI like the famous ChatGPT, which is well discussed these days is well respected worldwide. And this has enabled us to beat the average market growth in Q1 worldwide. So we grew our market share. The details, obviously, the sectors, et cetera, will be explained later by our CFO, Jochen Ruetz. But let me give you one highlight.

In our most focused markets is the U.S.A., where we decided last year to focus our growth investments on. And it's not less, as you know, than the biggest IT market in the world. In this market, we grew by impressive 62%, and it's now the fourth biggest market of GFT. All over, across all markets, we grew year-over-year 10% and too, improved our adjusted EBIT by 17%. The sector split is actually more or less unchanged to last quarter, and we saw growth in all sectors. And also, we improved our ESG rating considerably.

Now let's move to the next page, a quick update on our recent acquisition. We acquired targens, which is a German supplier for compliance solutions for banks. They provide products as well as services. The products actually have been sold to 7 of the 10 largest banks in Germany. So it's a very stable recurrent revenues. Out of them, it's actually installed in 56 countries worldwide, and we do see opportunities for further growth outside Germany. And the services business is also very stable.

We have closed the acquisition as planned. There was no further surprise on April 3. And we have now started the integration program, and I'm happy to share we already worked together in some projects. So the strategic fit we saw when we took the decision to acquire targens has remained unchanged. And we're now looking forward forming one organization, which we believe will be done by end '24. So also, the current market situation, especially in the U.S., but only in Europe, where you know that some banks struggled especially regional banks.

We believe that the regulator will become more active in the next year. And this will actually support us, actually across the world, either because there is consolidation in the market, bigger banks buy smaller banks, or smaller banks, regional banks who so far did not have to comply with regulation because they have been free or let's say, released, they -- for sure, especially in the U.S., they all have to comply with regulation more than today, which typically is then an area of growth for us. Having said that, now let's dive into the details. I hand over to Jochen.

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

Thank you, Marika. And let's directly jump to Slide #6, and look at the Q1 key figures. [indiscernible] that ongoing double-digit sales and earnings growth, revenues up 10%, more than EUR 190 million. These numbers do not yet include the already mentioned target steel, because that company will only be consolidated from April onwards. When we look at the order backlog, we see a minus 3%.

The quality of the order backlog is unchanged to last year, but what we do see is clients being a bit more cautious to hand out longer-term projects to the vendors like GFT. And therefore, the pipeline is as good as before, but we have less in order backlog, more in lower probabilities, which is probably pretty much representing the market sentiment at the moment. EBITDA up 7%, the more focused EBIT adjusted. Our most operational earnings figure is up 17%.

And you see on the right side, the 2 smaller bullet points, we had negative effects from capacity adjustments where we invested a bit more than last year, EUR 1.5 million versus $900,000 in Q1 of '22, and we had a negative FX effect with minus 500,000. The same effect last year was plus EUR 300 million. If you add the 2, we have a headwind of EUR 1.4 million in the first quarter from those 2 cost decisions. And despite that headwind, we were able to increase EBIT adjusted by 17%.

EBT is up 12%, of course, now including amortization M&A effects and virtual share programs, but still up 12%. Going forward, I would put the other topics to the next slide. Let's go to Slide #7 and look at our growth markets. Let's start on the right side. And in a nutshell, we have 3 nontypical effects in Q1. Two are on the right side. And let me start from the top. Our sector industry grew fastest in the group, 24%. That was a bit surprising to us as well.

So we have some traction, good traction with industry clients, but this will not prevail throughout the year. So the 24% are a bit exceptionally good in Q1. Looking at insurance, that's the second nontypical effect, only 4% growth. We saw our insurance business drive over the last 2 years, a lot more than 30% to 40%, 4% is a bit lower. We saw some clients starting cautiously into the year. We believe that 4% will pick up throughout the year and will exceed the industry growth in the end.

Not surprising, our core business, the banking business is up 10%, in line with good growth. Going to the left side of the slide, our client portfolio, the third nontypical effect is with the clients more than EUR 50 million. Well, you follow us for a long time, you know it's only one client, this is Deutsche Bank. And the share with Deutsche increased to 17%. So we saw declines with Deutsche over the last 6 years. And now for the first time, we saw an increase.

The revenues with that client grew by 40% versus the first quarter of last year. So that is quite an increase, mainly because one project, the Google project was ongoing. And another project, which was planned to come to an end was also still ongoing, which is the Postbank integration. So we saw more revenues than expected. We believe throughout the year, the 17% Deutsche Bank share will go down to 14% again, like we saw in 2022.

Going to the next 2 groups. Clients on a yearly level, generating more than EUR 10 million or more than EUR 5 million. We saw a decline in the group of more than 10% and an increase in the group of more than EUR 5 million. While there is a bit of a statistical effect, because 2 clients generated EUR 2.4 million in the first quarter, which is less than EUR 2.5 million, which we would need to be in the second group, and they moved into the third group.

So there's a bit of a statistical effect, which might go back and forth throughout the year. For us, the group more than EUR 5 million, more than EUR 10 million is the most important client group, because they are generating the biggest part of our profitability. These are very efficient accounts. Growth is fueled by all clients, also the smaller ones, below EUR 5 million, where we see they were stable in this time period.

Moving forward, Slide #8, and let's take a look at the quarters. In Q3, we generated EUR 190.7 million. That is a growth of 10% versus last year. On the EBIT adjusted side, we saw the increase of 17% as already reported. We usually have a kind of a drop off on the profitability in the first quarter versus the fourth, because especially fixed price projects often come to an end at the end of the calendar year and the end is usually profitable.

And therefore, we always see kind of a decline in Q1. And January is always a slow month to start. Comparing Q1 of '23 to Q4 of '22. So quarter-over-quarter, we see a slight increase. It's nearly stable, but we see an increase of 1.3% on the revenue side and the reduction in the EBIT adjusted due to the reasons I already mentioned, we have a lot of fixed price projects ending at the end of Q4 '22. And now we have a normal quarter.

And of course, the 2 effects on the FX side and on capacity adjustments, I already mentioned to slides before, also were not helping our first quarter profitability. Moving forward, Slide #9. And we now combined the slides for the business segments, revenue and earnings. It's one slide. You see the revenue on the left side and the EBIT adjusted on the right side. So here, I want to go into the operational performance of the segment. Start with revenues.

First of all, the revenue growth between the 2 segments is more balanced in Q1 than it was last year, where we saw that Americas, U.K. and APAC was heavily outperforming the Continental European growth. Now it's more balanced. We see that Americas, U.K., APAC grew by 8% organically and 1% from FX effect to overall 9%, biggest growth. [ Ricker ] already mentioned it, in the U.S., also Mexico contributing some other markets like Brazil, we will see that on the next slide, growing more slowly.

One important information is that we moved EUR 4 million of revenues between the 2 operational segments. One client decided he doesn't want to be invoiced from the U.K. anymore, but he wants direct invoicing from Poland for EUR 4 million of revenues in Q1. So that was moved versus last year. It was moved in Q1 '23 between the 2 segments. So it would -- it's a bit overstating growth in Continental Europe and understating growth in Americas.

That said, Continental Europe grown by 11%, roughly 4%, 5% coming from the special effect, closer to Americas and U.K. growth than in the past. Looking at EBIT adjusted, we see that both segments grew the EBIT adjusted on the Americas, U.K., APAC side, the margin heavily extended. While on the Continental European side, it's more stable. And let me here mention briefly the Others segment, which is kind of the consolidation segment, which on the EBIT-adjusted side is more negative than in the year before.

The main reason here is that we do not allocate all our group charges to our Brazilian subsidiary for tax optimization reasons. There is a heavy import tax on these charges. Therefore, we keep them in the mother company holding, which is shown here under Others. So that's the main driver. We improved Americas, U.K., APAC profitability, but we have a bit of more cost on Others side. All right. Let's move forward to Slide #10. It's the revenue by market and showing the countries.

We changed the graph somewhat. It was a cake chart last year. Now we moved to these columns, because the data is a bit easier to read. Our biggest market is still Brazil. However, we saw a small decline in the Brazilian market, 2% less on a euro basis. We see that investments in the market are more and more stagnating than last year with the new and less business-oriented government. So that's the current trend in Brazil that we see and we foresee for the full year.

We will come back to growth, we believe in '23, but it probably will be more back-end loaded in the second half. U.K., our second biggest market, as I mentioned, EUR 4 million moved to Poland. When you look at Poland, they heavily increased the revenue, more than 100%. Yes, that was not sales success. It was indeed EUR 4 million moved for one client from U.K. to Poland. The delivery was always in Poland.

Now we simply also moved the invoicing in line with clients' demand. U.S. is indeed our fourth biggest market right now, growing by more than 60% in the first quarter. That's what we wanted to achieve. Poland already mentioned, growing not directly organically, client moved. Singapore, Hong Kong kind of balancing out. Hong Kong reducing, Singapore growing. For us, this is like one market as we manage it. And only Switzerland is a bit behind our previous year's numbers.

Let's move forward, Slide #11. This is the first one, the income statement. Not so much to mention, of course, revenue growth reflects the same 10%. Other operating income reflects less FX effects. Therefore, the number was reducing. We see a parallel effect on the other operating expenses. More important, cost purchase services, reducing by 6% while growing by 10%, it shows we're using more internal employees and less freelancers in the first quarter.

Personnel expenses, up 12%. As I said, we used less freelancers, therefore, a bit more personnel expenses. If you combine the 2, which is needed to generate our revenue, the ratio is now 80%. It was 81% last year. So that is an improvement. So we see efficiency gains. Last but not least, income tax, let me mention, we saw 30%, and this is what we predict for the full year of 23% tax rate of 30%. Let's move forward to Slide #12, cash flow analysis.

Starting on the very, very left. The net cash at the beginning of the year was positive, EUR 35.7 million. Let me mention the always most interesting operating cash flow, which was minus EUR 3 million. There is a special effect inside. At the end of '22, we received EUR 14.34 million, as mentioned in the third bullet point. EUR 14.3 million from the European Union to be forwarded to our clients, with just the kind of bank in the middle. The money came to our bank accounts in late December, and it left our bank accounts in early January.

So it's like, well, that's bad for working capital explanations. Last year was overstated by EUR 14 million. Q1 working capital changes are understated by EUR 40 million. True operating cash flow, therefore, was plus EUR 11 million, which compares to EUR 3 million last year, a significant improvement, but only that European Union payment, which was just the passthrough makes the numbers look lower. Cash flow financing activities only as one reason we had to pay for the targens acquisition 1 day after quarter end.

So we already prefinanced. We already used our credit facilities. So loaded up our cash position, loaded also up our financing liabilities, so that we could pay on the 3rd of April. So this is a one-off effect. Next quarter, we will see the net cash on the very right, which was now EUR 29.6 million reduced heavily slightly to the negative because of the targens payments. Next slide, #13, the balance sheet doesn't show anything special.

Only the last thing I just mentioned on cash flow. We have more cash on board. We have more liability on board at the end of March, simply to pay the targens acquisition 1 day later. And that's the only move we saw on the balance sheet total. And last slide on my side is Slide #14, attrition -- sorry, let's start with the employee number on the left side. Employees, 8,800 slightly reduced versus Q4, but 8% growth year-over-year versus the first quarter.

You remember, we grew revenues by 10%, 8% people growth, particularly in Spain and Italy. When we look at the contractor number, we see it's below previous year's numbers, which is a logical link to the profit and loss statement, less cost for contractors. We use more of our own people. Utilization stood at 89%, roughly 1 percentage point below Q1 of last year, mainly because we saw lower call-offs in the first 2 months of the year. It was a slower start in '23. Clients were a bit more cautious with using their budgets, especially in January and February.

We saw utilization come back nicely in March, and we believe Q2 will be back to normal, but January, February was not perfect. And last but not least, attrition. Well, that was our only brand on the slide, right? We see it down to 14%. It's easier to get people today. They are changing jobs a bit less actively like then over the last quarters. When you see the peak at 20% was in Q2 of last year. It's now 14%, which makes hiring a bit easier today. Back to Marika.

[Marika Lulay, executive]

Thank you, Jochen. So let me come to the outlook part. So we are on Page #16, which just summarizes the quantitative comments. Growth remains our mission, unchanged. And as I just explained in the first part, especially the banking, let's say, difficulties some banks face now, we rather see that as a chance for us because as I said, it will result in regulatory -- increases of regulatory requirements, which then needs to be fulfilled by IT. Also, the drive for new technologies is unbroken.

Cloud modernization became mainstream business, so the demand is huge. Also, the new drive for AI-based solutions is still a bit small. They're still more talked about than their projects. But we see that all clients are interested in generative AI solutions. And I can tell you that we were experimenting using generative AI ourselves to speed up our programming, which basically means we increase our productivity and efficiency towards our clients. And it looks very promising results. Having said that, still, this needs to be sorted out IP topics when you use it for clients, but a very positive outlook on that.

We anticipate growth in every sector, as Jochen mentioned, above the market in all sectors. And therefore, summarize it all up, GFT is very resilient. As you can see, we had 2 years behind us with huge growth, which we were able to deal with. And despite the last 2 years that the war for talent are becoming [indiscernible] stop saying war of talent, the war has been lost, talent has won. Still also that happened, we were able to win the people. Now we were able to adjust to a bit of a slowdown in demand immediately.

We kept our profitability. We are conscious we can keep growing above the markets. And our agility at scalability is heavily appreciated by the clients. And we are winning big clients worldwide and as we work mainly for mega banks. The current reduction in some smaller banks, again, does not hit us, but we rather see that as a positive basis for the future. So let's come to numbers besides the qualitative statements. I know you guys are always interested in concrete numbers.

So there is actually not much of a surprise. As in a summary, we simply reconfirm our guidance unchanged. It's a revenue growth of 16% to EUR 850 million compared to last year. This is well above our peers. We expect, by the way, the market growth across all sectors to be in the range of 6% to 8%. Hence, our predicted growth of 16%, including the target acquisitions, obviously well above. But even if you deduct targens, the organic growth is still above market.

We expect also the EBIT adjusted to grow by 19%, which is the most operational number you can look at, which compared to the revenue growth of 16% also shows that we are improving our profitability. EBT growth only by 9%. That obviously includes cost stemming from the acquisition, which are usually the first-year effect. Our main challenge is now Q2. It is the quarter where we see a partial increase in our costs coming from those salary increases, which had not been executed on January 1, but are executed on April 1.

It's usually in GFT, we have 2 times that we increase salaries. Our price increases already affected Q1 positively. They will continue the whole year. We will have some price increases starting in Q2, but still Q2 is now the focus for us. And the second thing I want to share is that we do expect that the demand further strengthened in the second half. Hence, we are confident on our guidance. I think then we are through with the main parts of the presentation. And then I will hand back to the operator and ready to take your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Andreas Wolf, Warburg Research.

[Andreas Wolf, analyst]

I'm curious about the order backlog development going forward, which you have already alluded to this that orders are becoming smaller. But from your conversations with the client and the pipeline going forward, I would assume that the client demand basically backs your view on the full year. Is that correct? That would be my first question.

And then you were talking about capacity adjustments in Q1. I'm just trying to understand whether I got it correctly. So you're basically referring to employee increases? Or have you also lowered capacities in certain areas that's not fully visible to me? So obviously, the capacity adjustment led to some underutilization as we've seen in the chart that you've shown? And would it be then, right? And that's probably also relating to the first question to assume higher utilization going forward.

And then the 12% organic growth rate that you are basically targeting, excluding targens, is this also backed by current client conversations?

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

Let me start with the capacity adjustments. Well, it's the more diplomatic term for restructurings. And therefore, we always have that, right? Every quarter, we have some restructuring. We are such a big company today. There's always something happening. And Q1 stood out that we had more capacity adjustments in Brazil, where we saw kind of, first of all, the investments reducing somewhat and then a shift in demand, so that we reacted very fast.

We are now ready to go for Q2. Utilization there will be spot on again. And you're right that we had some utilization issues, the 1%. In the end, also had a result in more capacity adjustments. And again, Q1, I think we've done, it will now go back down to normal levels, which is like EUR 0.5 million per quarter. That's the normal level of GFT, just qualitative improvements. And it is restructuring, which we need.

[Marika Lulay, executive]

Mr. Wolf, your question regarding the order backlog. So the situation in the market is as follows. Last year, because it always has to be explained in the context of last year, last year at this time, the clients were absolutely concerned, if not frightened, that if they would not hand out full year contracts, long-term contracts to their suppliers, that they would not get the support and the capacity they need. Because the market was so hot, so overheated that the clients chose to hand out longer purchase orders than they have done the years before, and they are now back to normal, you could say.

So they again, think, you know what? I can do it just for the next quarter. GFT and others will still be ready for the quarter after because the market has, let's say, cooled down a bit. So your conclusion is fully right, our pipeline is absolutely -- let's say, is the same quality as the previous years. We have the full backing of our guidance with the pipeline. Just the back-order backlog looks a bit lower, which rather describes the clients being a bit more relaxed in handing out the purchase orders.

This, I think, also answers the third question. You asked whether the 12% organic growth is back to our pipeline. It is fully backed by our pipeline.

[Andreas Wolf, analyst]

Okay. Is it mainly supported by the U.S. business? Or is it basically spread across all your clients?

[Marika Lulay, executive]

No, it's actually spread across. We do not see that the current -- I mean, we do not guide individual countries to the outside market. But in terms of the bottom-up commitment we see from our countries, there the pipeline coverage is more or less the same.

As you could see with a chart where Jochen shared the markets, we have seen pressure in APAC. We see steep demand in the U.S. We have seen stagnation in Brazil, which now we believe we see a trend change. So Brazil will come back on the growth path. It is our biggest market. So therefore, it is relevant that this market grows.

And on Continental Europe, it's rather stable. So I mean they usually do not overheat and they usually do not cooldown totally. So -- and U.K. is always a bit on the edge. They can go up faster. So overall, it's more or less the same. With the coverage I just said, we expect APAC for this year will not grow and Americas will obviously grow faster than any other country, especially given now that Brazil is back on the growth path.

[Operator]

Next question comes from the line of Sven Sauer, Kepler Cheuvreux.

[Sven Sauer, analyst]

The first one would be on the FX impact. I'm sorry if I misunderstood this, but you are having a positive FX impact on sales, but a negative FX impact on EBIT, is that correct?

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

Let me answer directly, yes. But they are not directly comparable. The FX impact on sales is purely recalculating foreign currencies into euros. The FX impact that we are referring to in the key figures slide, they are balance sheet effects. They come up with time gaps between invoicing and money received. And the 2 numbers we calculated to euros can be positive or negative.

And as the euro was strengthening throughout the first quarter, we saw negative effects coming from that. So that directly hits our P&L statement. While the effects on the revenue side and the indirect effects also on the EBIT-adjusted side have been minor in the first quarter, as we've seen only 1% on the FX.

[Sven Sauer, analyst]

Okay, okay. Then second question is regarding the profitability or the margin of the 2 segments, APAC and Continental. There was a change, the one went up and the one went down compared to the previous year. Is this also a result of this project shifting from the U.K. to Poland?

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

Yes. Well, first of all, let's start with why is Europe more profitable than Americas, U.K., APAC? That's a very simple reason. We compare through revenue, and the revenue is only the external revenue. We have nearshore delivery in Poland and in Spain, which are both part of Continental Europe. Internal nearshore delivery has no revenue.

The revenue is shown if it is sold in the U.K. in the business segment, Americas, U.K., APAC. But part of the margin due to our internal transfer prices, which have to comply with OECD tax standards, part of the margin remains in Poland and Spain. And therefore, these markets have a headwind -- sorry, a tailwind, so that's the right word, from these effects.

And that's why the Continental European business segment is more profitable than Americas and U.K. That's why we always say that's the wrong way to look at GFT by looking at the profitability of those 2 segments. Not easy to compare. The total number is more speaking.

[Sven Sauer, analyst]

Yes. Okay, okay. Two smaller questions left. The decline in external contractors. As far as can remember, this is the first quarter-over-quarter decline that we have seen in a couple of quarters. I just wanted to confirm, you said this was intentional because of lower demand, or was there any other reason why the external contractors declined?

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

No, it was a lower demand. It was easier to get our own people in the market, and that was the issue over the last 2 years. And we were not able to grow hiring, recruiting as fast as demand, therefore we use more and more freelancers.

And now it's the other way around. Growth is a bit reduced. And therefore, it's easier to backfill positions. The margins are slightly better when we hire people and have them on projects than for contractors, where there's usually an extra margin on their side or the agency side, and therefore, we like a good combination.

And in strong growth. Usually, freelancers pick up. When growth reduces, freelancer number usually reduces. We saw the same effects in the years 2016 to 2020, so it always depends if a market is strongly growing or more moderately growing, if the number of contractors expands.

[Marika Lulay, executive]

And let me add, it's a way to, I call it, to [indiscernible]. So if we would have, let's say, 100% only own people, then in some markets, in some countries, it's more difficult to adjust. As you know, in some countries, its easier. So we also use that let's say, that buffer, that contingency with contractors wisely and consciously to scale down quickly or scale up quickly.

[Sven Sauer, analyst]

Okay. Very clear. And then last and final question. You mentioned that you are expecting some positive impacts from the situation regarding the banks in the U.S. from regulatory changes which, I mean I understand theoretically, it makes sense.

But just looking back over the past years, the push that you got from the regulatory changes were more driven towards the cloud implementation, whereas now it's -- I mean, I'm not a bank expert, but now it's more, I guess, surrounding capital requirements and capital ratios and debt of banks. So I'm wondering where exactly do you see the benefit for IT implementation in this issue?

[Marika Lulay, executive]

So first of all, you're absolutely right. The immediate impact by the regulator increasing threshold, for example, for regional banks, is that there will be an increased request for liquidity, et cetera, et cetera, which you could seriously say, that's the bank's problem. What's the GFT play in here?

It's easy. In order the bank must document and must comply with regulation in a traceable way, they must deliver reports in an extensive way, and that cannot be done manually. Full stop. So this must be implemented with [ IG ] systems. This could either be done by obviously adjusting the current core banking solutions or adding new features, programming a new interface, adding a new report.

So it depends on how, let's say, how richly featured the existing core banking solution of the bank is. This is obviously more a minor adjustment, but it can be a huge transformation. If for example, the banks so far have worked with a very limited core banking solution, thinking well, regulatory is not the biggest topic. And then they have to actually, let's say, increase the maturity level.

So it can go from -- it's not much of a work and they may do this with a local partner who sits around them in a, call these, family and friends, or they might need somebody who is really mature on that and know how to do this, because the regulator will not accept that they can take them 2 years to deliver the report.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Wolfgang Specht, Berenberg.

[Wolfgang Specht, analyst]

Three additional ones from my side. First, on the vertical split you've shown, with industry growing overproportionately by 24%. You already indicated that we should not expect this level to remain for the rest of the year. Can you give us any idea if there were larger one-off projects included in the first quarter?

And second one on targens, you are still indicating a contribution around EUR 30 million, which is somewhat below 3/4 of last year. So I would expect this business also to be, let's say, back-end loaded. So is it just conservatism on your side or any other reason not to go over 3/4 of [ 22 ]?

Finally, on employee growth at 8%, we learned that you slowed down somewhat, employee growth and also made less use of freelancers. But isn't that run rate too low to make it to, let's say, 14% or 15% overall revenue growth for the full year? So do we need to speed up hiring from this quarter?

[Marika Lulay, executive]

So Mr. Specht, let me address the question, then maybe Jochen can give a bit more detail. So on the last one, you're absolutely right. If we were to continue with the growth in employees as in Q1, we would not make the guidance, very clear. So we expect the employee growth to pick up.

We are absolutely confident because, honestly, in the current market condition, where some of our competitors are firing and the big tech companies have offloaded a lot of people to the market, you could see even our attrition went down. It's easier to find people. Also salaries are more under control than we even expected Q3 last year, where we were looking into '23, really being a bit horrified with the salary expectations. Running now into our salary increased session in April, we see that expectations still high, but lowered a bit compared to our first expectations. So actually right, this will speed up.

Second, on targens, yes, it's may be a bit conservative. We said that, so your interpretation is right. Still, please give us Q2. Let us see how this really goes, the integration goes, as we rather want to over-deliver than underdeliver. On the industry side, I think Jochen can better explain. I think it has a little bit a bit of some clients being sorted left and right, but I guess Jochen can explain that.

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

Correct. We did that. After the resorting, we saw the 24%, which was quite high, unsurprisingly high. Over the year, we believe it will be 20% or slightly below 20%. So it will normalize somewhat. It's still our smallest sector. Therefore, it's kind of a base effect. And 1 or 2 points are easily achieved. We believe this will smoothen a bit in the category of 15% to 20% for the full year.

[Operator]

Next question comes from Knud Hinkel, Pareto Securities.

[Knud Hinkel, analyst]

First of all, on -- Jochen, we've seen a strong growth with Deutsche and with other clients and was in a little bit tough to growth. So my question -- and you already alluded to the reasons behind that, my question would be why didn't we see more of a positive margin effect? Because my understanding so far was that business with Deutsche is a higher margin for GFT. So I wondered, why did we see the margins coming up in the first quarter? That would be my first question.

And second question, more general one. So at the beginning of the year, we thought, okay, investment banking, not the best environment probably for GFT. But the commercial banks, they should profit from higher interest income or higher interest spread. But we learned that not every bank can profit from that. You already talked a little bit about the regional banks in the U.S.

So my question is now, do you think that's still a net positive, so the interest environment is still a net positive for the commercial banks that you said larger clients, not so much effective? But what we have learned from past financial crisis that, first of all, some weaker players, they show up, but then it kind of cripples through the entire sector in many -- in the past. So would you still say that the environment is a positive for the banking sector as your large client segment? So that would be my second question.

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

So we split the answer. Let me start with Deutsche Bank growth. Yes, you're right. But one of our challenges this year, of course every year and this year especially, is increasing prices with the clients, in line with salary inflation. With Deutsche in most countries, we have a contract that doesn't allow us to increase prices in '23, very simple answer. So no, it is not pushing the margin up.

Very simple, simply because of the contractual situation with that special client, right? We are overexceeding in other clients. But in some clients, it is not easy or even [ impossible ] to increase the price for contractual reasons. And therefore, there's an upside in '24 for Deutsche but not '23. '23, we have to endure, no increase, which in the end is even the reduction in margin because people cost our growth. So yes, we like the revenue increase at Deutsche, gives us more projects. But from the profitability side, it's the exception to the past. We are not benefiting in '22.

[Marika Lulay, executive]

On your second question, first of all, let me say that our clients earning more money is always better for us than the opposite. It's a pretty generic statement. Second, you said that the regional bank problem crippled into the rest. I would say we should differentiate statements in the press, we should differentiate activities on the stock market with the real problems the bank has.

The mega banks are performing pretty well. Many of them have issued quite good numbers. What has an effect, and that is actually an interesting effect, the mega banks were always under pressure that a regional bank, a digital bank came to the market with better -- let's say, easier products, easier to use. So they challenge that. So we said that they were kind of challenger banks.

And the mega banks, it took them a while to engage into the real digitization journey and really engage which, by definition, are much bigger tickets than if you build a little digital bank with just one product, which is maybe a savings account and a credit card. And those mega banks have now engaged, and they keep going.

Now obviously, the situation that the other banks get under pressure allows those mega banks to actually maybe smile a bit here and there and maybe then slow down a bit or say, you know what? Let's do it a bit slower. So this could be, yes. So if you would make the most negative worst outlook, you would say that the effect actually slows the EBIT down, but it doesn't stop it.

Having said that, we actually see the opposite. We actually see both as the opposite. You see that some banks, very big banks actually just continue as if nothing has happened, because they rather see the chance to now acquire those banks, which, by the way, just happened with JPMorgan. They simply see the chance now to consolidate. So they keep even extending their digitalization program.

We do the other banks who probably -- for example, in APAC, we've seen that, they stop digital initiatives because they say, listen, the market is not friendly for new things, so let's wait. So hence, we see a slower growth than last year but still growth. And I believe that in the second half, this will have that they have been sorted out. They know where they stand, and then it will have continued. So overall, really positive outlook.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time.

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

Well, so as it seems there are no further questions left, let me thank you for your participation. And of course, if there are still some questions left open, please do not hesitate to contact our IR team. So thanks again. Have a nice day and goodbye.

[Marika Lulay, executive]

Thank you very much. Goodbye.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your lines. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.