GFT Technologies SE

XETRA:GFT

Earnings Call Analysis

Reflecting on Growth Amidst Challenges

GFT Technologies SE has demonstrated resilience in a challenging market by posting a 10% revenue growth, totaling EUR 646 million for the first nine months of 2024. This increase is largely driven by acquisitions and strong performance in key markets like Brazil, Germany, and Spain, which grew 13%, 17%, and 16% respectively. The positive trajectory is supported by a significant order backlog increase of 26%, setting a robust foundation for future quarters.

Acquisition Powering Expansion

The Sophos acquisition plays a crucial role in GFT's momentum, particularly enhancing its banking sector capabilities, which grew by 14%. The integration of Sophos has not only broadened GFT's client base but has also significantly bolstered their technological capabilities in AI, data, and cloud services, proving essential in securing a major banking modernization project with Bancolombia, the largest bank in Colombia.

Navigating Market Fluctuations

Despite overall revenue growth, GFT faced challenges, particularly in the U.K., U.S., and Canada, where the financial services sector remains cautious. The company reported a reduction in its organic growth rate, with some segments experiencing declines. Furthermore, the devaluation of Latin American currencies negatively impacted revenues by approximately EUR 8 million, further complicating the growth narrative.

Improved Profitability but Mixed Margins

Adjusted EBIT grew by 2% to EUR 57 million, reflecting the positive impact of improved utilization even as personnel expenses increased by 16%. The adjusted EBIT margin slightly slipped compared to last year due to operational adjustments costing nearly EUR 7 million. This highlights the ongoing need for operational efficiency amidst rising costs.

AI Initiatives Enhancing Productivity

GFT is heavily investing in its AI capabilities through the GFT AI Impact initiative, aimed at automating and improving various stages of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). Early adoption results show impressive metrics such as an 85% reduction in time for documentation generation and a 90% improvement in story creation. This technology demonstrates GFT's commitment to leveraging AI as a key growth driver.

Guidance Adjustment and Future Outlook

GFT is updating its full-year revenue guidance to EUR 865 million and expects an adjusted EBIT of EUR 77 million, reflecting a conservative approach given the current market uncertainties. The revised target indicates a growth of 10% from the previous year, demonstrating confidence in their strategic initiatives despite recent fluctuations in demand and currency exchange effects.

Strategic Positioning and Market Leadership

As GFT continues to enhance its market position, it has been recognized as a leader in digital banking services, which is pivotal for attracting new clients. The company also improved its EcoVadis rating, emphasizing its commitment to sustainability, which is increasingly important to clients in the technology landscape. This positioning not only strengthens GFT’s competitive advantage but also aligns with the growing trend towards corporate social responsibility.

Conclusion: A Path Forward

In summary, GFT Technologies SE is poised for continued growth, albeit with a cautious outlook influenced by external market factors. The strategic acquisitions, innovative AI initiatives, and market repositioning efforts underline GFT's plans for future success, while acknowledging the challenges ahead. Investors should consider these factors when assessing GFT's long-term potential in an evolving market.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q3 9M Results 2024 of GFT Technologies SE Conference Call and Live Webcast. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Andreas Herzog, Head of IR. Please go ahead.

[Andreas Herzog, executive]

Thank you, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, warm welcome also from my side to our 9M earnings call. We welcome you with a full set of C-level here; Marika Lulay and Marco Santos, and Jochen Ruetz. After some words from Marika, Marco will guide you through the highlights and Jochen will take over then for the financials. Afterwards, we will have enough time for your questions.

So without further delay, and let me say that one more time, Marika, the floor is yours.

[Marika Lulay, executive]

Thank you, Andreas. So, ladies and gentlemen, also warm welcome from my side to all of you joining our earnings call, which happens to be my last call as CEO with you today.

Now, looking back on my 22 years in GFT, I can share that it has been an incredible journey filled with challenges, triumphs and countless memorable moments with the whole GFT team. But most importantly, we have built altogether a firm with strong core values around global collaboration, client proximity and the passion for technology.

Now, as we close out this year, I want to take a moment to reflect on '24. At the beginning, I had higher expectations for what we could achieve. Nevertheless, we faced numerous challenges and unforeseen obstacles that tested our resilience and adaptability. Now, despite those headwinds, I'm proud to say that we have continued to grow and make progress. And this growth in a tough market is a testament to the dedication and hard work of our entire team. While we may have not reached every goal we set out to achieve, our ability to thrive in the face of adversity is strong. And regardless of all the headwinds, we continued to invest into our skills and products based on AI technologies. We simply believe and have no doubt that artificial intelligence is our future.

I'm also pleased to announce that the transition to Marco Santos, our new CEO, has been completed smoothly. I'm working with him for more than 10 years now in GFT, and I have seen firsthand his unwavering commitment to driving our success, and I have full trust in him to lead GFT forward. And for more than 20 years I had the honor of working closely with Jochen Ruetz, our CFO. And I'm 100% confident in his ability to continue guiding our financial strategy with the same dedication and expertise he has always shown.

And last but not least, I want to express my gratitude for the constructive criticism and insightful questions from you, our investors and analysts over the years. They have played a crucial role in shaping our strategy and ensuring our continuous improvement. As I have stepped down, I have full confidence in the leadership team and the vision we set forth. I believe that the best days are still ahead of us, and I'm excited to watch from the sidelines as the GFT journey continues. It's simply been an honor to lead GFT and to work alongside such talented and passionate individuals.

Thank you for your belief in our mission. And I hand over now to Marco.

[Marco Santos, executive]

Thank you, Marika. Warm welcome to everyone. Thank you for joining us today.

So let's get started on Slide #3. It's good to share that our results maintained growth momentum. Our revenues grew 10% to EUR 646 million and our adjusted EBT margin improved by 10% to EUR 57 million in the first 9 months of 2024. Our 3 largest markets are Brazil, Germany and Spain, which delivered strong growth rates of 13%, 17% and 16%, respectively. In terms of sectors, banking generated strong 14% of growth, followed by industry manufacturing and others with 7% of growth and insurance, which also shown improvement this quarter compared to the previous one. Those numbers will be presented in detail by Jochen on the next slides.

Let me go to some of the highlights of the quarter. First highlight is related to our largest acquisition in the history of GFT, Sophos Solutions. It's important to remind the strategic objectives of that acquisition. Number one, access to new strategic markets and clients based in Colombia and Latin America Spanish-speaking countries. Number two, expansion of our core banking AI data and cloud capabilities. And number three, improve and diversify of our global delivery platform with Colombia as a new agile, high scale and price optimization delivery hub.

On that regards, we are very happy to share that we were able to close a new large scale and strategic next-generation core banking modernization program at Bancolombia, the largest, the #1 bank in Colombia with more than 40 million clients. This program was only possible due to the combination of Sophos and GFT global capabilities and differentiation in banking modernization.

The second highlight is related to the U.S. and U.K. markets. We have been able to successfully expand our client base with Tier-2 and mid-sized financial service organizations, with significant growth in those client segments in both countries. This shows that our core capabilities are helping us to diversify our client portfolio in markets that are still cautious, focused on cost optimization and delaying decision making.

The third highlight is related to our insurance sector, which had experienced a business reduction on previous quarters. However, we see now a positive recovery in Q3. And I'm very happy to share that we won 2 new strategic projects, with leading insurance organizations in Latin America and Europe, encompassing large-scale cloud-native modernization and Guidewire implementation, respectively.

The fourth highlight of the quarter is the impressive growth and successful client adoption of GFT AI Impact, which is our own generative AI product to accelerate and improve productivity in the core business of GFT, which is the software development lifecycle, what we call SDLC. We will talk more about GFT AI Impact in the next slide.

The final highlights are related to the GFT positioning, which is an important element of our strategy. GFT was featured in a unique position as a global leader in digital banking services in the third quarter 2024 SPARK Matrix by the Quadrant Knowledge Solutions. And last but not least, GFT also further improved the EcoVadis rating by 2 points, which is a key ESG and CSR rating recognized by our main clients when it comes to sustainability.

To conclude, we are confident about our global offerings, capabilities and differentiation engineering excellence. And being cognizant about the market is still cautious. We are updating our guidance to EUR 865 million of revenues and EUR 77 million of adjusted EBT. Those financial KPIs are a strong accomplishment for us, which we are fully committed to deliver, and they represent a business improvement in Q4 compared to Q3 and a constant growth compared to last year, thus demonstrating our ability to deliver high-value excellence, technology innovation and transformation to our clients.

So, now let's turn to Slide #5 -- #4. In the beginning of 2023, our next-generation technology R&D team started the creation of GFT AI Impact, our own product to bring generative AI into the real life of the process of software development life cycle. We have a strong belief of the potential of this technology to our industry in terms of productivity improvement and acceleration of the software development throughputs. Therefore, we established a dedicated product team, which scaled up in the end of 2023 and moved strongly across 2024.

Now, we are very happy to share that GFT AI Impact has gained traction in the markets. In the last quarter, we have won 10 new clients for the products. We sold over 170 license, and we have been working on more than 20 pilots and proof of concepts across the world. I must say that GFT AI is indeed accelerating the software development life cycle and boosting productivity by 50% to 90%. These are real and proven numbers from our current clients. The product is available directly by GFT, and it's approved by and available through the Microsoft Global Marketplace and the AWS Global Marketplace. And it's under final steps to be released at the Google Cloud Marketplace.

We want to have our own teams equipped with GFT AI Impact. Therefore, we started a large-scale training program, and we are proud to have more than 3,000 GFT engineers already trained and on it. And last but not least, we have the vision to open the evolution of GFT AI Impact to beyond the current product team. We want to have all GFT employees, all GFT employees working to enhance the capabilities and functionalities of GFT AI Impact. On that regard, we created an internal network effect to bring already 800 engineers engaged right now with the GFT AI Impact product evolution on top of the current product core team. This is huge, and I'm very optimistic about the future of our AI-powered software development differentiation.

Let's move to my final slide, #5. One key element of our marketing positioning strategy is related to leading information technology research analysis. We always want to be in the top right corner of those quadrant graphs. And if you look at the graph on this slide, you see GFT there in a stunning position. This is a major success, but it does not come as a surprise. It's a result of years of hard work.

For the third consecutive year, GFT has been listed as a Technology Leader in the Quadrant SPARK Matrix report for Digital Banking Services. This year, we have further strengthened our leadership position and won the highest rating for Service Excellence and ranking among the top 3 providers for Customer Impact. The analysis highlights the key differentiators that set GFT apart. Number one, tailored digital banking solutions. GFT offers digital banking assets and accelerators such as BankLiteX, BankStart and particularly across platforms like Thought Machine and Mambu, next-generation core banking technologies. The AI data marketplace enhance customer experience and productivity through innovative tools and templates such as the GFT Banking Assistant.

Second differentiator, GFT digital banking launcher, a cloud-native solution for modern core banking functionalities facilitates the transition from legacy systems to modern multi-core banking environment and achieves scalability, flexibility and real-time processing. And third, differentiator, BankLiteX and BankStart solutions, which is a unified development hub for collaboration across UI, UX, DevOps, operational teams offering business logic, workflows, smart contracts and configuration management. To conclude, GFT is strongly positioned and recognized as a leader across the board.

Now, let me turn the call to our CFO, Dr. Jochen Ruetz.

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

Thanks, Marco.

Let's go forward directly jump at Slide #7 and look at the 9-month numbers of '24. As Marco already indicated, revenue was up 10%. We came in at EUR 645 million of revenue, 10% growth, of which 2 percentage points are organic. The order backlog is up 26%, including Sophos. That's a good basis for the quarters to come. And the EBITDA is up 6%.

Let me focus a bit more on the EBIT adjusted, our operational profitability KPI. And as you know, and as we mentioned in the bullets on the bottom, we only adjust for M&A effects and virtual share price effects for managers. We don't adapt for other extraordinary items. And therefore, I list them on the right side below the third bullet point. What has been impacting our adjusted EBIT in the first 9 months of this year? First of all, capacity adjustments worth nearly EUR 7 million in the year '23 so far. This compares to EUR 3.6 million in the year before. So, we have expanded our restructuring programs, or we had to expand our restructuring programs during the year 2024.

Next little bullet point, FX effects. FX currently is not heavily in our favor, especially the Latin American currencies have devalued against the euro. We have negative P&L FX effects of minus EUR 1.5 million comparing to minus EUR 0.9 million last year. And last but not least, the fiscal proceeding in Brazil. With the Q2 reporting, we already highlighted the gross effect of the release for fiscal proceeding in Brazil at EUR 10 million, a one-off, of which we assumed back then that EUR 6 million would become effective in '24.

With the Q3 reporting, we adapt this evaluation. We believe all EUR 10 million of this one-time extraordinary effect become effective in 2024. The gap of EUR 4 million were assumed 3 months ago to go to higher bonus accruals required and reserves for '25. But due to the lower growth and profitability, both effects are no longer foreseen, and we regard the EUR 10 million as extraordinary effect this year.

If you add up all these 3 little bullet points, you see that in '24, the saldo is plus EUR 1.6 million. The year before '23, it was minus EUR 4.5 million, meaning the EBIT adjusted margin that we're showing and what is the real operational EBIT adjusted margin is not exactly the same. We're a bit lower this year than in the year before. Nevertheless, showing EUR 57 million of EBIT adjusted. Going further, EBIT down 5% -- EBIT up 5%, EBT down 3%, but that is pure mathematics with the effects growing due to the Sophos acquisition, more amortization, more order book adjustment and more interest effects. I'll come back to the tax rate on later slides.

So let's move forward to Slide #8. Looking at the growth on the right side first by our sectors. Marco already mentioned, banking grew by 14% after 9 months this year. This is, of course, mostly driven by the Sophos acquisition, which is mostly banking business. Going further up, the insurance part of the GFT business is down 3 percentage points to 15% of the overall business. This is a good evolution in the third quarter. After 6 months, the KPI was still minus 7%. Now it's only minus 3%. We believe the insurance business on a 12-month basis will be more or less flat compared to 2023. On the industry and others side, we are growing by 7% at the moment, and this represents 10% of the GFT business.

Let's go to the left side, the balanced client portfolio. Well, there are not many changes here versus last time and versus last year. The big client bigger than EUR 50 million is Deutsche Bank, quite stable also on nominal level, stable versus '23, representing 15% of our portfolio. Clients between EUR 10 million and EUR 50 million, 40% of the portfolio, nearly unchanged to last year. Clients between EUR 5 million and EUR 10 million at 19%, a bit higher than the year before and the smaller funnel at 26%, a bit lower than a year ago. But overall, not many changes and a balanced client portfolio, as we believe.

Let's move forward to Slide #9, and look at the quarter Q3 '24 in more detail. Overall, we see an improved utilization, which increases profitability. But let me focus on revenue first, the left side of the slide comparing to Q3 of last year. We see 8% revenue growth versus last year, which is mainly driven by M&A. The organic part is 1%, and that is mostly driven by our Brazilian entity. Comparing revenue to the last quarter, so Q3 of this year to Q2 of this year, we see a slight decline of 1 percentage point. Typical, Q3 has the seasonal effects from Spain and Italy for the holiday season. So every year, the gap between Q2 and Q3 is not big. When you look at the left of the chart, right, '23, it was a small increase. This year, it is an incremental reduction. Overall, this year, we suffer a bit more from the weakness in the markets, especially in the U.K.

Let's go to the right side, adjusted EBIT and compare it to a year ago, we see the adjusted EBIT is up 2 percentage points -- sorry, 2%, not 2 percentage points, that would be too good. Profit contribution of Sophos is included. We also see a better utilization, but we also had higher capacity adjustments in the third quarter of 2024, leading overall to this 2% improvement. Comparing to the last quarter to Q2 of this year, we see a 16% increase, but the last quarter, Q2 included the Brazil court case effect, so the comparison is a bit hard to do at the moment. I would not go in too deep for this one.

Let's move forward and go for Slide #10, and look at the revenues by segment. Americas, U.K., APAC is up 6%, of which 11% come from M&A, which is the Sophos acquisition that we've done and that we're consolidating since February. The organic piece of Americas, U.K., APAC is down 4%. So, we see differing evolutions here. We see Brazil stronger, the whole South American market stable, but weakness in our U.K., U.S., Canada and our Asian markets. The saldo is a minus 4% effect. And the weak currencies, especially in LatAm, lead to an FX impact of minus 1% as well.

Looking at the revenues in Continental Europe, we see an increase of 16%. There's also an M&A effect, which comes from the targens acquisition we've done last year. We consolidated targens in Germany from April '23 onwards. So it is in Q1 of '24 and not comparing to Q1 of last year, where it was missing, therefore, a small M&A effect of 4%. But what good news is the organic side, 11% growth, especially in our markets, Spain, Italy, France and Poland. So, good evolution on the revenue side for Continental Europe, which leads to a total growth of 16%. When looking at the EBIT adjusted, we see Americas, U.K., APAC is up 11%, but including the Brazil court case. So it is a bit non-typical. Looking at Continental Europe, we're down 11%, which is mostly explainable via the capacity adjustments we did in the first 9 months of this year.

Let me highlight, I think I did so 3 months ago already, the others line on the EBIT adjusted side, you see a far better EBIT adjusted in others. We are now allocating after very intense discussions and tax optimization, holding fees to Brazil, which is complex to do. This improves the other line by EUR 4 million this year, and it burdens the Americas, U.K. and APAC line by the same EUR 4 million. So, we are moving a bit of profitability out of Americas, U.K. and APAC. For the group, one more comment, the growth rate, 8% from M&A, 2% from organic FX and the saldo is 0 for the time being. We believe on a full-year basis, FX will show a negative of at least 1%, which would be roughly EUR 8 million.

So moving forward, going to Slide #11, revenues by markets. Brazil is our biggest market today, representing 16% of the GFT business, and it is growing by 13% on a euro basis after 9 months. This 13% on euro basis compare to a growth in local currency of 19%. So, we're not able to show the full potential of our Brazilian growth on euro basis because of the FX effect.

Second biggest market is Germany. It's benefiting from the targens acquisition, which is included. If we would take out targens, growth would be roughly 4%, so somewhat less than indicated here. Spain, up 16%, fully organic. Other European markets, Italy, up 4%; Poland, up 17%. So the European market is performing very nicely. The tougher markets in U.K., U.S. and Canada still show a red arrow. U.K. at minus 13% comparable to last time we reported. U.S. and Canada slightly improving quarter-over-quarter. So the negative numbers were higher after 6 months. We are improving in Q3.

And let me not go into the smaller countries, but move forward to Slide #12, income statement. Revenue, of course, 10%, as already discussed. Operating income includes the EUR 10 million of Brazil fiscal proceeding profit. So that is the explanation for the sharp increase of other operating income. Cost of purchase services, these are freelancers and third parties we're utilizing in our projects. You see it's only growing by 3%, which means we are, of course, favoring the GFT teams, our own employees in times of tougher utilization and the freelancer business was less benefiting from us.

Personnel expenses up 16%. And now the usually very important KPI, and it's highlighted on the right side in the fourth bullet point of personnel expenses, cost of purchased services minus the restructuring cost. And this ratio versus revenue is now at 83.3% versus 81.3% 1 year ago. This is where we're losing the margin that we're currently not seeing on EBIT adjusted. So, we currently have a less efficient personnel and freelancer cost ratio to revenue, something to work on in the coming quarters. Other operating expenses, up 7%, so controlled depreciation, amortization up because of the Sophos acquisition. Same is true for the interest, up because of the financing we have been doing because of the Sophos acquisition.

Let's move forward. Cash flow analysis on Slide 13. We started the year with a net cash of EUR 4 million. The operating cash flow so far after 9 months stands at EUR 22 million, above what we reported 12 months ago, which was only EUR 13 million. So, this is going into the right direction. For the full year, we believe operating cash flow should be around EUR 40 million, EUR 45 million. So the usual trend in the fourth quarter will continue. And cash flow investing activities after 9 months, of course, impacted by Sophos. This is mainly the Sophos acquisition, and then we used financing to compensate. The net cash at the end of the third quarter stood at EUR 84 million, or roughly 0.8, 0.9 factor of EBITDA for 12 months. So, we are quite solidly financed as we used to be.

Going forward, Slide #14, balance sheet. Very quick one here because everything is linked to the Sophos acquisition, the balance sheet expansion, no other special items for the balance sheet.

Therefore, I directly go forward to Slide #15 and look at the people slide. Let's start with employee number. Employee number is up 24%, of course, compared to 12 months ago because of the Sophos acquisition. On top, we have been hiring people in Brazil to support the strong revenue growth we saw there. We also hired people in India and Spain, but on a smaller scale, and we had reductions in some of our markets like Mexico, Poland, U.K. and Costa Rica. Utilization, as already indicated in our 6 months call, is improving in the third quarter, kind of parallel to last year at 91.4%, and we believe it will continue to be on a quite high note also in Q4. And on the very right, well, finally, we're back.

We're seeing attrition move again. 12-month trailing attrition at GFT is 11% at the end of September versus below 10% when we reported last time in July, August. So attrition is coming back. Usually an indicator that people start moving, business is kind of getting more easily available to people. Therefore, jobs are available. That's why we see attrition come back.

And last but not least, Slide #16, the outlook. Our Q3 revenue came in roughly EUR 10 million lower, or 5% lower than anticipated 3 months ago, especially the increase in September that we expected was below our expectations. Currency evolution for our Latin American markets are also not supportive. Still muted demand from financial services clients across many of our target markets trigger a reduction in our revenue expectation for the fourth quarter, which we now foresee at EUR 220 million, and this leads to our adapted revenue guidance of EUR 865 million, representing a growth of 10% versus last year. This revenue reduction in the second half of '24 includes weaker currencies in our South American markets, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, in the end, probably explaining EUR 6 million to EUR 8 million of reduced outlook.

Now looking at the EBIT adjusted. The improvement in our utilization in the second half cannot fully compensate for the missing gross margins from the reduced revenues and therefore, leading to an adapted EBIT adjusted expectation of now EUR 77 million. The weaker demand puts pressure on prices, leading to our EBIT adjusted growing 5%, which is slower than our revenue growth. EBT follows the operational profitability. So it is complemented by M&A effects and interest expenses and stands at EUR 65 million now.

And with that, please, let's move to the Q&A session.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Andreas Wolf with Warburg Research.

[Andreas Wolf, analyst]

A couple of questions from my side. The first one would be on the order backlog. So if I take the EUR 327 million at the end of September and extract the EUR 50 million from Sophos, it seems like we had a favorable increase. If I'm not mistaken, then targens is not distorting this comparison. So, is it already the major order that is reflected in the order book? Or am I missing something?

The second is on GFT AI impact. I'm trying to better understand what the final value proposition is of this offering? Shall we think of it as an extension to GitHub? I know it's a very simple attempt to understand or describe the solution. But maybe, Marco, you could also provide more insight on what it's actually doing. Is it kind of a solution that you would be selling to other IT services providers? How shall we look at it?

Attrition going up, does this already mean that -- that's my third question that the market conditions are improving. I had a look at some of your peers. I had the impression that the environment has stabilized, although we are not seeing a full recovery yet. Is it something that you can confirm also looking into the next year?

And my fourth question is also for Marco. You took over the U.S. market initially before becoming CEO of GFT. How shall we look at the U.S. market going forward? Who will be in charge of it because it's an important pillar of GFT's future growth? That was my fourth question. And yes, a big thank you to Marika for the insights that you provided to us and the explanations that contributed to better understand GFT. And all the best for your next step in your career.

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

Thank you very much. Let me start with the question about order backlog. No, the deal in Colombia doesn't really move the numbers yet because it starts small, as always, together with a partner. Therefore, no, it's the average business of GFT. And we were also a bit positively surprised how big the order book looks. It's a good basis for the next quarters. The other question was attrition up. Is that good for the market? Well, it is maybe, and we always call it like this, an early warning indicator of where the market might be going. When you look at peers, you have seen that the financial services industry and our peers was usually the weakest industry in their portfolio, especially the bigger players who have a balanced portfolio. In GFT, we're not that balanced. We're focused on financial services. So, we fully suffer from the weakness that it currently has, especially in the markets of U.K., U.S., Canada, where the Tier 1 banks are saving money. Therefore, yes, early warning, probably positive. Let's see when we see it within the banks.

Marco, over to you.

[Marco Santos, executive]

Thank you for your question regarding the GFT AI Impact. And the value proposition of GFT AI is the following. So, we have a product that utilize and leverage the 3 key large language models of the market, which is OpenAI from Microsoft, Bedrock from AWS and Gemini from Google. And we leverage over them, and we are applying 6 functionalities in the software development life cycle that is around coding. As we all know, the software development life cycle, coding is around [ 34% ] of the time that the developers invest. The other time of the developers is doing many other things around it, sales, documentation, creating use case test scenarios, finding issues on software, fixing code, et cetera, et cetera. So, GFT AI impact is meant for those functionalities that are around coding. And we have been, let's say, finding very good results and real results.

To give an example, real results from our current clients, 85% improvement in time for generating of documentation, 90% of improvement in terms of story creation, 80% of improvement in reviewing coding, 83% of improvement in finding and fixing issues on codes. So, real proven facts. And if you compare with GitHub Copilots, actually, GFT AI Impact, there are elements that we extend -- that you can extend GitHub Copilots. So that's -- and we have also functionalities that are not there.

And another element that is the GFT AI Impact is works with Microsoft OpenAI, which is what GitHub Copilot use. But we can also work with the other 2 large language models in the market, which means that we can be agnostic and tailored to the better environment of the client. If the client is Google, most probably you're not going to use GitHub Copilot, and then you're going to utilize the Google large language module. So, GFT AI Impact is agnostic on that regard, okay?

And then the USA question. And regarding the USA question, yes, I was in charge of USA before moving -- before assuming the whole region of Americas and now assuming as the CEO of the group. What I must say is my main focus is still United States of America, regardless if I'm here working on the group. Obviously, all the countries you have to look for. But USA is a key market and it is part of our vision. It's part of our strategic intent. And I and myself and the whole team, we are going to keep providing the right and appropriate priority for USA.

[Operator]

The next question is from Wolfgang Specht with Berenberg.

[Wolfgang Specht, analyst]

A follow up on both attrition and order book, and then have an additional one. In the attrition number, do you count only, let's say, unforced assignments or also the active layoffs you did in the past quarters? That would be interesting. And then on your improved order book, can you give us an idea what the duration of this order book is, or how long it will bring us into 2025? Are there some very long-term contracts? Or is it rather, let's say, in the next month? That would be interesting?

And then you mentioned in the half year 1 call that the first weeks of July rather saw, let's say, a good intake or a strong performance. So, what happened towards the end of Q3 that led, let's say, to rather disappointment and the need for another guidance cut that would be interesting? And finally, Marika, thanks a lot for the last years. It has been a big pleasure working with you.

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

Let me pick up the questions. Attrition and definition of attrition, it is only unforced leaves. So, people who leave us and who we usually immediately need to replace by finding somebody in the market because they are utilized. On order book, yes, the average duration, it is the next -- mostly the next 2 quarters, and there's a bit beyond. But it is mostly the next quarter, heavily in the order book than the quarter after to a high extent, and then it reduces for the quarters beyond.

And last but not least, after H1 numbers, we said July was good, which was absolutely true. And we had the good utilization. What did not come was the volume on the revenue side in August and September as we had expected. Again, with EUR 10 million down, which is 5% of the overall revenue. It's not a huge miss, but it's a miss that we were below what we had expected. And September is usually a very, very strong month for GFT because, first of all, you're out of holiday season in Europe. And of course, on the south part of the world, it's winter or spring, and therefore, people are fully billable. But we did not find the full volume of business that we had intended when we gave our guidance update with the Q2 numbers, full stop.

[Operator]

The next question is from Knud Hinkel with Pareto Securities.

[Knud Hinkel, analyst]

First things first, thank you, Marika, for all the insights that you shared and also the grain of humor that you brought into our sessions here after the quarterly reporting. So, thank you very much for that.

So as my connection was interrupted for a couple of minutes, there's a risk that I now repeat the question that has already been asked. But having that in mind, my question would be the following. On GFT AI Impact, can you share also some financial targets that come with these initiatives like revenues, EBITDA margins, something on that? That would be helpful.

Second question, a little bit more general in nature, I would say. It seems to me -- so my naive view would be that the growth stalled a little bit for GFT at the same point in time when large language models became more popular. And we're reading every day in the press that these are very helpful for IT companies and stuff like this. Is it possible that customers become more efficient in IT programming and stuff like this and need less support for -- at least for simple tasks from outside? Is that also maybe playing a role? That would be my second question.

And my third question would be capacity adjustments. So, we are quite sizable thus far after 9 months. Can you also guide that what -- how do you see it for the full year? So, you already said that you have to work on personnel expenses? Or is there more to come in the full year?

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

Yes. Let me pick up the capacity adjustment number because that's the easy one, EUR 6.9 million after 9 months. We believe we will end the year between EUR 7.5 million and EUR 8 million. So, not a lot more to come as we foresee at the moment.

[Marco Santos, executive]

Okay. So, thank you for the question regarding the GFT AI Impact. So first for -- in terms of guidance, in terms of revenues and EBT, EBITDA related to GFT AI Impact, this is -- we cannot provide at this point of time. We are in the process of budgeting and preparing all the year of 2025. That is going to -- that we're going to finish in the end of the year as scheduled. And the GFT AI Impact is part of this whole planning process, okay? So that's number one.

Number two, specifically regarding the -- you're talking about the adoption of GFT AI Impact and the adoption of generative AI into the clients, right, in the software development life cycle. So, my answer is simple. We strongly believe that generative AI is going to and should be used to create differentiation and create productivity and accelerate the process of software development life cycle. That's why we created our own technology, which is GFT AI Impact, but we are also working with the key technology of the market as well. okay?

We believe that the clients are also going to implement technologies in order to improve productivity, and that's one of the objectives of GFT AI Impact that should be sold to clients in order that they can utilize that in order to have more efficient IT teams. One of -- some of the clients that we sold GFT AI Impact, we sold directly to the clients for their IT team, not for GFT IT team. So, we sold GFT AI Impact in order to be utilized by the client itself. So, that's something that we believe. And we strongly believe that taking the driving seat, a leading position on that space, that scale can really creates differentiation for us, and we can have a competitive advantage in the future and obviously, more business and growth on the long run.

[Jochen Ruetz, executive]

And to complement Marco's answer to that question, we've seen 2 different markets, the Anglo-Saxon market in our case, which are the red compared to the year before, right? We have negative growth rates. We had the Southern European, Southern American markets with strong growth rates, which means there's not clear trend if LLMs are now interfering in growth rates. It is simply the markets and the behavior. We see the Tier 1 banks especially in the Anglo-Saxon market being very strict on budgets, reducing, moving more inside, moving more to very low-cost locations.

The Indian numbers are coming up first. That's what we're seeing. Their guidance already picking up somewhat. We don't see that as a -- the LLM as the reason for this. It's client behavior in different regions at different speeds. And in the end for GFT at the moment in a market that is consolidating more than some of the other markets like public, et cetera, therefore, no, not yet. As Marco said, AI Impact and those kind of tools will have an impact. We see them more as an upside than a downside. But so far, it is mostly normal client behavior in different markets at different speeds.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question.

I would now like to turn the conference back over to Andreas Herzog for any closing remarks.

[Andreas Herzog, executive]

Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone, for taking part.

I would leave the closing remarks to Marika.

[Marika Lulay, executive]

Once in a lifetime, Andreas. Once in a lifetime. So, thank you all. Yes, closing remarks.

I want to use the moment to actually thank the team here in the room in Stuttgart. I want to, first of all, thank the finance team for always providing the numbers, whether we like them or not, but always done in full transparency and give good explanations. I want to thank the IT team who make sure that the technology works. It's embarrassing for a technology company if technology is not working. We had those problems, I remember some while back in our calls. And definitely, last but not least, thank the Investor Relations team for keeping up all the relationship to you guys, the analysts, the investors on the call, making sure we get all the data points out into the market, the press release in the morning, the reports, everything. It looks so easy. I know it's not easy. It's a lot of work. And it's not always fun to work for a capital market company.

I know that because we have to be very disciplined, very transparent. But that's exactly the benefit. We are very transparent and very disciplined. So, thank you all. Thanks everybody. And I know you're going to support Marco the same way you have supported me, and I always enjoyed those moments, especially when the share price goes up. I think we need to push a bit today to bring it up further and for the future. So, thank you all. Thank you, guys, on the phone listening to us, giving us your trust, and I wish everybody a good day.

[Andreas Herzog, executive]

Thank you, Marika. Bye-bye.

[Marika Lulay, executive]

Bye-bye.

[Marco Santos, executive]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.