Q2 2023 Endava PLC Earnings Call
Speaker 1: The.
Speaker 2: Good day and welcome to NDAVA's second quarter of Fiscal Year 2023 Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad.
Speaker 2: After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star than one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star than two. Please note, this event is being recorded.
Speaker 2: I would now like to turn the conference over to Ms. Lawrence Madsen, Head of Investor Relations at Endava PLC. Please go ahead.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to NDAVA's second quarter of fiscal year 2023 conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Joining me today are John Cottrell, NDAVA's Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Thurston, NDAVA's Chief Financial Officer.
Speaker 3: Before we begin, a quick reminder to our listeners. Our remarks today include forward-looking statements, including our guidance for Q3, fiscal year 2023, and for the full fiscal year 2023, and other forward-looking statements regarding our business and operations.
Speaker 3: These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statement.
Speaker 3: Actual results and the timing of certain events may differ materially from the results or timing predicted or implied by such forward-looking statements, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance.
Speaker 3: Please note that these forward-looking statements made during this conference call speak only as of today's date and the company undertakes no obligation to update them to reflect subsequent events or circumstances other than to the extent required by law.
Speaker 3: For more information, please refer to the Risk Factors section of our annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 31, 2022.
Speaker 3: Also, during the call, we will present both IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures. The reconciliation of non-IFRS to IFRS measures is included in today's earnings press release, which you can find on our Investor Relations website.
Speaker 3: or on the FCC website. The link to the replay of this call will also be available on our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to John .
Speaker 4: Thank you, Lawrence.
Speaker 5: I'd like to thank you all for joining us today and I hope you're all well.
Speaker 5: We're pleased to be here to provide an update on our business and financial performance for the three months ended December 31st, 2022.
Speaker 5: We reported another solid quarter with revenue totaling £205.2 million for Q2 of our fiscal year 2023, representing a 30.2% year-on-year increase.
Speaker 5: from 157.7 million pounds in the same period in the prior year.
Speaker 5: We ended the quarter with an adjusted profit before tax for the period of £41.9 million, representing a 20.4% adjusted profit before tax margin.
Speaker 5: On the revenue front, we grew in all geographies and verticals here on year during the quarter.
Speaker 5: As usual, our revenue growth continues to be driven by both the expansion of work for our existing clients
Speaker 5: and the acquisition of new ones during the quarter.
Speaker 5: And more importantly, we continue to prioritize our efforts on larger relationships that can grow and scale.
Speaker 5: As a result, we continued growing the number of larger clients, with a total of 156 clients paying us in excess of £1 million per year.
Speaker 5: compared to 107 in the same period last year, representing an impressive 46% year-on-year increase.
Speaker 5: We also saw the cohort of our largest clients, those spending over £5 million per year with us.
Speaker 5: grow by 48%.
Speaker 5: from 21 in the same period last year to 31 last quarter.
Speaker 5: Starting in December , we saw a change in behavior, but some clients added another level of due diligence to their decision-making cycles.
Speaker 5: slowing the commencement of new projects and in some cases pausing existing spend as they reassess their priorities.
Speaker 5: These behaviors reduced activity towards the end of December .
Speaker 5: And although we are now seeing decisions being made and activity increasing again, the short pause reduced our expectations of growth for this fiscal year.
Speaker 5: In our ever more digital world, we are seeing continued strong demand for our more sophisticated design and ideation skills.
Speaker 5: such as digital product strategy, digital product design and user experience design.
Speaker 5: as well as the more technical areas of user interface and mobile design build and test.
Speaker 5: We've been asked to apply our skills.
Speaker 5: to a range of digital applications.
Speaker 5: including client portals to simplify client interactions with complex
Speaker 5: B2B interfaces for digital commerce.
Speaker 5: in-transit customer experiences for the transportation industry, and internal portals to make organizations more efficient and effective by improving their employee experience.
Speaker 5: We've been a long-term provider of cloud expertise, with strong partnerships with all major providers.
Speaker 5: and the majority of our development and operational work utilizes the technology.
Speaker 5: We're increasingly seeing our clients moving on from cloud being about infrastructure towards cloud as a true enabler of next generation capability.
Speaker 5: well-octeted and implemented solutions.
Speaker 5: Allow for the ephemeral and elastic nature of cloud to be used to allow our clients to only use and pay for what they need when they need it.
Speaker 5: Furthermore, new technology frameworks deployed within the cloud and accessible through a rich API landscape.
Speaker 5: allow our clients to rapidly adopt and integrate technology in a small amount of time.
Speaker 5: For example, it's inconceivable to imagine the complexity of adopting a technology such as GPT-3, which chat GPT utilizes, for instance.
Speaker 5: within legacy compute environments.
Speaker 5: Together, new architectural patterns and the ubiquity of cloud mean that in Dara is well placed to help our clients rapidly build, deploy and test products and create a flywheel for future growth for us and for our clients.
Speaker 5: Today, I'd like to highlight the depth and breadth of our client relationships in two of our largest regions, the UK and continental Europe .
Speaker 5: Indava has its roots in the UK and over the years our business in the UK has evolved and diversified. For example we grew in the banking sector where we are currently working with three large high street banks.
Speaker 5: as they seek to navigate regulatory change and modernize their market-facing offerings with new cloud-based solutions.
Speaker 5: We helped a large UK bank transform its payment of suffering.
Speaker 5: through the launch of an award-winning payments proposition.
Speaker 5: This cloud-native solution leverages the capabilities of open banking to provide next-generation offerings to retail and business customers.
Speaker 5: We also develop strong relationships in the insurance industry.
Speaker 5: For example, Indava is supporting Beazley Digital by building and supporting multiple distribution channels for broker quote submissions.
Speaker 5: and we are developing new products for the US portfolio on the Rulebook platform.
Speaker 5: Additionally, we are working to onboard product lines onto the Beazley underwriter workbench in order to aid efficiencies in responding to broker submissions.
Speaker 5: and maximize intelligent underwriting capabilities.
Speaker 5: Our business in the UK also includes some of the largest corporates in TMT.
Speaker 5: Indava has helped arm a British semiconductor and software design company.
Speaker 5: Leverage the use of cloud to test its chip designs at scale.
Speaker 5: This delivery has allowed Arm to reduce its on-prem resources, allowed teams to meet their delivery deadlines, and even increase testing and improved quality of the design.
Speaker 5: This project won the Editors Choice Award in the best use of HPC in the cloud category in the HPC Wire 2022 awards.
Speaker 5: We're also working with two major communication service providers, delivering on the operation support system and business support system suite modernisation in the new era of open architecture cloud native self-healing networks.
Speaker 5: With our recognized competence in technology strategy, architecture and analysis in the connectivity area and integrating alternative payment solutions.
Speaker 5: We are in a strong position to support telcos in their quest for better platform monetization and to remain relevant in the market beyond commodity traditional services.
Speaker 5: Our payments expertise has helped us to develop strong relationships with the leading payment service providers in continental Europe .
Speaker 5: Additionally, as larger banks are re-entering the payment business,
Speaker 5: It has led us to help them with architecture design and platform development work.
Speaker 5: In Germany, this has been especially important with the increased adoption of cashless payments.
Speaker 5: in the post-pandemic world.
Speaker 5: We have been helping some of the largest payment service providers to automate and streamline their small and middle-sized enterprise onboarding processes.
Speaker 5: In 2019, we disrupted the market by launching an innovative fully digitized onboarding product with a market-leading payment provider, which we believe quickly became the benchmark product for the payment industry.
Speaker 5: Additionally, for over a decade, we have been helping some leading European banks address their digital agenda, as the emergence of digital banking platforms has enabled them to decouple the client-facing user interface from their legacy core.
Speaker 5: Our expertise ranges from building customized digital banking solutions.
Speaker 5: through to partnering with Backbase Digital Banking.
Speaker 5: We are currently implementing back-based digital banking for three European banks.
Speaker 5: In Romania, our work with Bank of Transylvania, the largest bank in the country, has helped position them as one of the most innovative banks in the region.
Speaker 5: We built for them a market-leading mobile banking application, as well as digitizing and automating their corporate lending process.
Speaker 5: In Switzerland, our clients include leading wealth managers and private banks.
Speaker 5: We are working with a private bank on a digital refresh of their client-facing portal as they look to address the generational shift of wealth to younger and more digitally savvy clients.
Speaker 5: Our work in capital markets includes high volume, low latency trading platforms in Germany and asset servicing platforms across the DAAC region, which includes Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as in Luxembourg.
Speaker 5: In Switzerland, this includes engineering for a market-leading commodity trader.
Speaker 5: where we are working across most of the core operational functions, including risk, audit, finance, customer and master data.
Speaker 5: In the Nordic region we are working with a technology provider on a data management solution with a goal of enabling capital markets operators to streamline the challenges associated with large volumes of data.
Speaker 5: In our TMT vertical, we are working with forward thinking companies in Europe in innovation hubs in Germany and the Nordic countries.
Speaker 5: The Aviv group, a subsidiary of Axel Springer,
Speaker 5: is one of the world's largest digital real estate tech companies based in Germany. The OV group partnered with Indava for an ambitious multi-air product and technology transformation journey.
Speaker 5: aiming to consolidate their existing brands spread across multiple countries onto a white-label platform.
Speaker 5: The new platform will enable significant operational savings.
Speaker 5: and we'll set a VVE on target for a future geographical expansion while providing a competitive advantage for its products portfolio.
Speaker 5: Indava is providing support in designing and building the new platform and has additional plans to support Aviv with their innovation projects, using Indava's experience with cutting-edge technology to open new distribution channels and markets.
Speaker 5: Additionally, we've been selected by Vodafone Ireland to help them modernizing the new B2B big data platform for enterprise customers.
Speaker 5: We're very excited about our glowing presence in the automotive sector in Europe .
Speaker 5: Our work with some of the largest car manufacturers in the DUC region is focusing on the digital opportunities such as connected car, in-car payments and insurance as a service.
Speaker 5: In the Nordic region, Indara has been working with the Swedish electric car manufacturer Polestar.
Speaker 5: supporting them evolve and scale the architecture that powers Polestar's business model, including end user interaction.
Speaker 5: This is a global effort and we are delivering services with teams in Central Europe and Latin America.
Speaker 5: As our relationship expands, it will include work with manufacturing supply chain and customer care divisions, as well as work on their consumer mobile apps.
Speaker 5: We embrace Paul Star's vision of an electric and sustainable future for the automotive industry.
Speaker 5: In Germany, Indara has been working closely with Deutsche Bahn to develop and operate a state-of-the-art video-on-demand portal available on over 380 intercity express high speed trains
Speaker 6: Germany.
Speaker 5: With this portal, passengers can now access a wide variety of movies, documentaries and TV shows on their personal devices.
Speaker 5: The solution in dalva build includes front-end development and integration within existing portals.
Speaker 5: On the back end we built a streaming CMS and encoding system.
Speaker 5: as well as content sourcing and continuous operations, monitoring, analytics, and customer support in collaboration with Deutsche Bahn.
Speaker 5: and Darla continuously brings innovations to the platform to offer best in class and entertainment to travel with us.
Speaker 5: We are well placed to understand the changing dynamics in these markets and our strong name recognition in the UK and Europe positions us well for continued growth.
Speaker 5: The integration process for Lexicon in Australia is going smoothly and we are already seeing some growth with existing clients due to the increased breadth and depth of services that dalva brings to the platform.
Speaker 5: I remain excited about our growth prospects in the Asian Pacific region.
Speaker 5: We're delighted to share some highlights of our WeCare sustainability approach over the past quarter.
Speaker 5: We've been focusing on rolling out a number of diversity programs, working closely with our Diversity and Inclusion Forum.
Speaker 5: We recently completed the second round of our Endava RISE Mentoring Programme, where 27 mentees were paired with 23 mentors for a six-month period, preparing our emerging Women's Stars for senior management and leadership roles.
Speaker 5: Also, as part of our partnership with the valuable 500.
Speaker 5: a global business collective innovating for disability inclusion.
Speaker 5: We launched and successfully completed in Derva Signs.
Speaker 5: a voluntary program offering our people basic level training in four sign languages.
Speaker 5: We're also delighted that in partnership with Planting Good Deeds, a not-for-profit organization based in Romania.
Speaker 5: We join the NYSE's Global Giving Campaign.
Speaker 5: We ended the quarter with 12,183 employees.
Speaker 5: a 17.2% increase from 10,391 in the same period last year.
Speaker 5: We continue to recruit very actively into the areas of strong demanding growth and to expand our sales and marketing teams. We are taking the opportunity of the less competitive talent market to recruit more senior and experience people in readiness for client growth.
Speaker 5: In summary, based on our conversations, we believe clients continue to prioritize digital transformation in their IT budgets.
Speaker 5: We are already seeing a recovery in demand as clients clarify their focus.
Speaker 5: and we believe the secular trends for our business remain strong.
Speaker 5: I'll now pass the call on to Mark who will walk you through our financial results for the quarter and provide guidance for the coming quarter and the fiscal year.
Speaker 4: Thanks John .
Speaker 5: And Darva's revenue totaled £205.2 million for the three months ended December 31, 2022, compared to £157.7 million in the same period in the prior year. A 30.2% increase over the same period in the prior year.
Speaker 5: In constant currency, our revenue growth rate was 23.4%.
Speaker 5: Perfectly 4 tax for Q2 fiscal year 2023 was £20.3 million compared to 19.1 million pounds in the same period in the prior year.
Speaker 5: are adjusted profit before tax for the three months and a December 31, 2022, the $41.9 million, compared to $33.0 million for the same period in the prior year.
Speaker 5: Our adjusted profit before tax margin was 20.4% for the three months ended December 31 2022 compared to 20.9% for the same period in the prior year.
Speaker 5: Adjusted profit before tax or adjusted PBT is defined as the company's profit before tax adjusted to exclude the impact of share-based compensation expense, amortization of acquired intangible assets, realized and unrealized foreign currency exchange gains and losses and fair value movement.
Speaker 5: on contingent consideration, all of which are non-cash items.
Speaker 5: Adjusted PBT margin is adjusted PBT as a percentage of total revenue.
Speaker 5: Our adjusted diluted earnings per share or EPS was 57 pence for the three months ended December 31, 2022, calculated on 58.0 million diluted shares as compared to 46 pence for the same period in the prior year calculated on 58.0 million diluted shares.
Speaker 5: Revenue from our 10 largest clients accounted for 31% of revenue for the three months ended December 31, 2022 compared to 34% for the same period last fiscal year.
Speaker 5: Additionally, the average spend per client from our 10 largest clients increased from £5.4 million to £6.5 million for the three months ended December 31, 2022, representing a 19% year-over-year increase.
Speaker 5: In the three months ended December 31, 2022, North America accounted for 33% of revenue compared to 35% in the same period last fiscal year. Europe accounted for 23% of revenue compared to 21% in the same period last fiscal year.
Speaker 5: and the UK accounted for 39% of revenue compared to 41% in the same period last fiscal year, while the rest of the world accounted for 5%.
Speaker 5: compared to 3% in the same period last year.
Speaker 5: Prevenue from North America grew 22.6% for the three months and to December 31, 2022, over the same quarter of fiscal year 2022. Comparing the same periods, revenue from Europe grew 42.9%
Speaker 5: the UK Group 21.2% and the rest of the world grew 163.6%.
Speaker 5: We grew in all three of our industry verticals during the quarter.
Speaker 5: Revenue from payments and financial services, Grew 35.4% for the three months ended to December 31, 2022. Revenue from payments and financial services accounted for 53% of revenue compared to 51% in the same period last fiscal year.
Speaker 5: Revenue from TMT grew 13.3% for the three months end of December 31, 2022, over the same course for fiscal year 2022 and accounted for 22% of revenue compared to 25% in the same period in the prior year.
Speaker 5: Revenue from other grew 36.6% for the three months ended December 31 2022, over the same call to fiscal year 2022 and now accounts for 25% of revenue compared to 24% in the same period in the prior year.
Speaker 5: We now turn to our Just-A-Free Cache Flow, which is our net cache provided by operating activities plus grounds received, less net purchases of non-current tangible and intangible assets.
Speaker 5: I adjusted the free cash flow with £37 million for the three months ended the December 31, 2022, compared to £31.2 million during the same period last fiscal year.
Speaker 5: Our cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period remain strong at 185.3 million pounds at December 31, 2022 compared to 162.8 million pounds at June 30, 2022.
Speaker 5: CAPEX for three months ended December 31, 2022, as a percentage of revenue was 2.0%, compared to 2.4% in the same period last fiscal year. I'd also like to highlight that we recently announced the successful closing of a £350 million revolving credit facility.
Speaker 5: Our guidance for Q3 fiscal year 2023 is as follows.
Speaker 5: And I would expect revenue to be in the range of £201 million to £203 million, representing constant currency revenue growth of between 14 and 15%.
Speaker 5: And Darva expects adjusted diluted EPS to be in the range of 52 to 54 pence push-up.
Speaker 5: Our guidance for full year fiscal year 2023 is as follows. And Darva expects revenue will be in the range of £812 million to £817 million, representing constant currency growth of between 19.0% and 20.0%.
Speaker 5: And Darva expects adjusted deluded EPS to be in a range of 220 to 225 Pents per share.
Speaker 5: This above guidance for Q3 fiscal year 2023 and the full year fiscal 2023 assumes the exchange rates at the end of January 2023 when the exchange rate was £1.23US and 1.14 of
Speaker 5: This guidance seeks to take into account the current macroeconomic headwind highlighted by John in his comments.
Speaker 5: This concludes our prepared comments. Operator, we are now ready to open the line for Q&A.
Speaker 2: We will now begin the question and answer session. Do ask a question, but you may press star than one on your telephone keypad.
Speaker 2: If you are using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys.
Speaker 2: If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2.
Speaker 2: At this time we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster.
Speaker 2: The first question comes from Brian Fergan with Collin. Please go ahead.
Speaker 2: Hi, thank you. I wanted to just dig in around the client behavior and maybe John the commentary you had on the behavior in December and how that has since progressed into February . So curious if this is delay or cancellations in some cases and what supports the 4Q sequential growth outlook versus the 3Q sequential pullback.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, teh.
Speaker 5: So what happened in December was as clients were...
Speaker 4: sourcing their budgets out for the new financial year. We saw them take on board an extra level of due diligence quite a few of them.
Speaker 4: And that resulted in some projects not proceeding, which we expected to carry on. Existing ones that is. And then you ones that were coming through just getting delayed in terms of when they were starting. As we've gone through January , we've seen some of those projects that we've...
Speaker 4: when that sort of hesitation that happened just after COVID hit with some clients pausing and stopping.
Speaker 4: but then the underlying sector of growth drivers in our space coming back.
Speaker 4: And so we're seeing that pipeline that we've got coming through in January and February . And so that's what's led us to guide in the way that we have. I'm picking up from the drop at the end of December with growth occurring through Q3 and on its Q4.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. I know TNT was conveyed to be weak before. Can you just give us a sense on how much this has spread to other verticals and maybe performance in your view by client region? I'm curious, you know, if this is confined to certain types of clients or if it is prevalent across the portfolio.
Speaker 5: Hi, Brian .
Speaker 5: When we called out TMT last time, it continues to be flat and modest from Q1's Q2. There's no sequential growth. It's particularly, we've seen that the deterioration of West Coast tech. And again, I think we will see...
Speaker 5: TMT actually declined as we go from Q3 to Q3. Payments is also an area that we're seeing significant down draft, particularly UK and North America. But then we're again seeing that recovery come through in Q4. Geographically, we expect North America to decline quarter on quarter.
Speaker 5: geos swinging back basically in Q4.
Speaker 7: Okay, thank you.
Speaker 7: Thanks for our next question.
Speaker 8: The next question comes from James Fawcett with Morgan Stanley . Please go ahead.
Speaker 9: Hey, it's Jonathan out of James. Thanks for your question. Can you provide an update on what you're seeing on the pricing side of the equation in the current environment? What's contemplated in your outlook from a pricing perspective and how are you thinking about your ability to drive pricing going forward?
Speaker 4: Thanks, Brian . Sorry, James.
Speaker 4: Yes, we're continuing to see price increases come through with clients and quite a few of those have taken effect at the beginning of January . However, an element of caution in our guide has been that we've seen price increases are not coming through going forward.
Speaker 4: even though we are still seeing that happen. So the main reduction has been volume based rather than price pressure.
Speaker 9: God, thanks for that. Can you tell us how utilization trended in the quarter and last quarter you mentioned is sequential step up in the back half across utilization? Does that still hold true?
Speaker 5: No, it doesn't. I mean given where we are with Q2, actually utilisation moved up a bit. You remember previously we were talking about building back the bench but given the slowdown of seeing Q3.
Speaker 5: We have to see the build up in bench, but actually the utilization isn't going to pick up in Q3, which really explains the gross margin drop that's implied in the guide that we're giving. But we do expect that the head can increase being somewhat muted from what we've historically seen.
Speaker 5: the utilisation will pick up in Q4.
Speaker 9: will pick up in Q4. Thanks, one color. Appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Jim.
Speaker 8: The next question comes from Brian Keane with Deutsche Bank.
Speaker 8: Brian Keane with Torture Bank. Please go ahead.
Speaker 10: Hi guys, just wanted to ask about the payments vertical and a little bit of what you saw there. I think you mentioned the down draft, maybe this quarter, but a recovery next. Can you just talk about the details there?
Speaker 4: Sure. So in payments, there's a bit of a shift going on in the market. I've mentioned this on previous calls and this is continuing, which is a slowdown in activity in the sort of the acquiring space.
Speaker 4: especially the AD ?i involvement.
Speaker 4: The larger acquires in some of the new product players.
Speaker 4: but that's been offset by growth in the new payments products.
Speaker 4: things like the open banking based products.
Speaker 4: the real-time payments based products.
Speaker 4: e-commerce is still a growing area and then merchant on boarding we seek quite a lot of activity.
Speaker 4: So I would say that what's happened in this quarter is that some of that acquiring pullback has been accelerated slightly. We've also seen acceleration in the new product space, but that hasn't quite offset.
Speaker 4: the pool back on the acquiring side, this quarter. But we continue to see demand growing. It's actually the bigger slice of our payment to state is in the new space.
Speaker 10: Got it. That's helpful. And then on M&A, what is the pipeline look like for M&A in any change in valuations yet given some of the market backdrop?
Speaker 4: Yes, we continue to talk to quite a few organisations about.
the M&A opportunities, still seeing a lot of organisations hitting the top of the pipeline. Most of them don't hit the sort of quality criteria that we are interested in, as in the culture of the growth rates.
and the positioning in the market that we have. So a lot of them we get we edit out. I have to say at the moment we're not seeing any drop in pricing. In fact, there's been one or two that we've been engaged in conversations with where the prices have...
been higher than we've previously seen and we've not fallen enough. So the pressure is from a private company valuation point of view and not going away.
Yes, that's what we heard from several others as well. Okay, guys, thanks so much.
Thanks, Frank. The next question comes from Mosha Kotri with WEDBUSH Securities. Please go ahead.
Okay, thanks. Thanks for taking my question. So is there anything specific from the top 10 client list that's kind of impacting visibility and impacting the results more than others? And I think...
I believe that FIS is still a top 10 customer. Maybe you can talk a bit about the dynamics of the relationship given the restructuring that they are going through at this point.
So, you know, FIS still remain top 10 client. I think when we were announcing last time they had to put out their cost reduction news and they put out some recent news with the last day or so, we continue to work with them.
and we focus on areas of where we traditionally sort of work with them, which is quite broad. We'll have to see how it pans out the demurger that they are planning for. But I suspect we won't see significant impact as ink.
Maybe these words, but I think we've taken the pain from, they know the cost of reduction exercise, that they enacted with effect really from this course that we're in Q3 and Q4.
I think the expectation is that that team energy will take most of 2023 kind of 23 to go through for Trans-Solion's pendants. But certainly the spirit within the World Pay Part of FIS is that that world.
and they would fix more on growth and should probably create more of a deep downstream force. Okay. And then in terms of the weakness and payments, are there specific, I think you mentioned some areas where you're seeing some weakness, but maybe...
Maybe it provides some color where you are seeing growth. And obviously some areas are probably weaker than others. And is there volume related kind of, in terms of how you generate your revenues? Is that any way related or actually correlated with volume growth for some of your customers? Thanks a lot.
So just quickly on your last point, no, all of our revenues are driven under time and materials type contracts with our clients.
Their volumes, of course, it affect the levels of investment that they want to make in their products and so on. So it can have an indirect effect.
And that is partly what is causing the pullback on the acquiring side. As payment types are starting to shift into the new product spaces.
So we see most of our activity in those new spaces. It's all about helping the move to frictionless payments in all the different areas where people pay for things.
Econness is a big area where we still see growth. Merchant on boarding, a lot of payments providers out there still have.
very laborious paper driven on boarding processes and actually putting those online and making them much more effective, tick box except legals, et cetera, type activities can...
reduce the time it takes to onboard a new client from weeks to hours. And then the open banking and real-time payment rails that are opening up are creating many opportunities for different sorts of products.
You know, close to the line, sort of wallets, et cetera, for consumers. So we're seeing that pick up. And actually it's one of the areas that is driving growth around the world outside of Europe , UK and North America for us.
But they're flopped. Thanks Josh. Thank you.
The next question comes from Maggie Nolan with William Blair.
This question comes from Maggie Nolan with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you. I think I heard you mention a less competitive talent market. Is that geography specific? Or is there any incremental information you can give on that? And then how is that impacted costs and wage inflation that you're seeing? Yeah, so it's just one of the opportunities.
people that are...
fundamental for us in driving growth. And it's pretty much universal across the world. Probably happened earlier in more developed nations, but it's cascaded into all of our states in the last few weeks. So, this is sort of our new
and the actual delivery locations as well, that pressure
in the market, competitive pressure in the market has a lightened up event cooled off. So as I mentioned, we're recruiting senior people and allowing a tradition to just move the dial a little bit in terms of the seniority and the organization that we have.
We went through the same process in the early stages of COVID pullback. And as you know that positioned us well to then be able to expand as the model came back in.
Okay, thanks. And then any other changes in the attrition metrics or maybe some more information on how things like the mentor program you mentioned are impacting those?
So our attrition is staying in about the same place. We were at 12.5% for the last quarter. So 12.6% in the previous quarter, so very close to where we were before. And I think we'll keep it in around that space going forward.
And that will keep us balanced as a business in terms of responding to the demand pickup that we've articulated.
Thank you.
Again, if you have a question, please press star then one.
The next question comes from Jamie Friedman with Tuscalhanna. Please go ahead.
I know you're getting a lot of questions about payments, but I just want to clarify, isn't the TMT vertical that?
slowed more materially and also Mark did not hear you say I think it was you speaking that it's hard to play to the flat sequential
So TMT was black sequentially for us Q1, Q2. I think as a third earlier North America, West Coast tech was biting stronger. We anticipate we will actually see a further sort of.
the scratch will decline going from Q2 to Q3, so it will come off further. But again, it's mainly driven in North America, West Coast tech, but we then see some uptick a little bit mootive compared with the premise of financial services when we go into Q4.
mainly driven by a really tech recovering basically and some activity in Talka.
Got it.
I realize you don't typically guide vertically, but would you have the same perspective on the cadence for payments and other for the remainder of the year? I think we will see a marginal decline quarter on the quarter, probably about a percentage point or so, as we go from...
Q2 into Q3, largely geo driven with the UK and North America, but then seems a pick-up actually in Q4. Again, pretty muted by our standards, but we will see I think the recovery coming through in North America.
and some mild recovery in the UK.
the country in the UK. And how about other?
Oh, I think it's for us, it's for me well, you know, so 6% growth Q1 Q2, all geographies call out health has been particularly strong, but most of our schools are strong. Little bit of weakness in retail, which we are seeing and applying the guide as we go.
from Q2 into Q3. So I think it will still continue to grow, but not at 6% you know, probably.
That's 3% or so. Good momentum. A bit of a headwind in terms of retail, we think as we go through, but it's a little bit of the edges, and then continued progress. Mobility for us, particularly health, for me particularly well at the moment.
Got it. Thank you for the call.
No problem. Thanks, Jerry. Again, if you have a question, please press star then 1.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to John Cotterill, CEO for any closing remarks.
Thanks for joining us today. I think you can see that digital transformation remains a priority for our clients and secular trends for our business remain strong.
And we look forward to speaking to you in a few months, but on the next earnings point.
The conference has concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.