Concentrix Corporation (NASDAQ:CNXC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Christopher Caldwell: Yes. So Ruplu, great question. I think you have to peel back the onion a little bit on these clients. Where we’re seeing weakness in this portfolio of clients is, as Andre pointed out, primarily crypto year-on-year, which is now de minimis to us kind of going forward. And then also in some of the fintechs. And to be more specific, we are seeing weakness in North American-based direct-to-consumer fintechs which have dramatically kind of cut back their customer acquisition and spend and are more focused at kind of driving frankly, real tangible, profitable returns. And I think when you look at that combination, that’s about a 5% headwind, which obviously will lap next year. So my expectation is that we’ll continue to see muted performance within this portfolio of accounts, probably until the back half of the year, early next year when either they start to spend more to expand or obviously, economy might turn around and/or we continue to add clients into that portfolio, which we’re doing.

Ruplu Bhattacharya: Okay. Let me ask Andre a question. So Andre, the operating environment is weaker. I mean revenue growth is lower. You’re taking on a lot of debt for the Webhelp acquisition. So talk to us about what is giving you confidence in being able to service that debt? And as part of that, if you can weave in some of the margin drivers and what your expectations are for cash flows and why you think that those can sustain.

Andre Valentine: Yes. So one of the things that’s really great about this business, Ruplu, through cycles is how it generates cash. And I go back as far back as — in this industry as far back as the global financial crisis and the participants even back then when revenues were soft, we’re able to drive really strong free cash flow. So it really starts with our ability to have a very variable cost base so we can quickly react as we did in this quarter to preserve margins. I think the other margin drivers as we go forward will be, again, getting into higher value services, including now higher-value services around helping our clients implement generative AI. Obviously, we can still get some leverage on our G&A as we grow even at these muted levels.

And then we add in, you mentioned the Webhelp and taking on the debt there. We add in Webhelp, generate strong free cash flows and then the synergies from that transaction kind of on top of things, which will be accretive both to margins and to free cash flow. So all of that has us very, very confident even at the increased interest rates that we can generate strong free cash flow, such as we are, frankly, in the Concentrix business this year, we’ll be able to do it even more so on a combined basis with Webhelp and with synergies and pay down debt. We’ve demonstrated our ability to do that in past transactions, the conversion transaction, the PK transaction, and we’ve hit the targets we’ve set for ourselves, both in terms of synergies, but more importantly, getting our debt levels down and getting down, frankly, more quickly than we indicated we would at the time that we did the transaction.

I feel very confident with Webhelp, we’ll be able to do the same.

Ruplu Bhattacharya: Okay. Let me ask one last question. From the prepared remarks, it sounded that like Webhelp had stronger growth. I think you mentioned something about 8% year-on-year constant currency. Was that right? And why do you think that is? Is it a difference in geographies that’s causing that? It just sounded that they had better performance. So what do you attribute that to?