Wipro Limited (NYSE:WIT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And we have to go with the pace of our clients in this context of uncertainty. An example of that is typically deals where there has been consolidation of vendors that we have won. And then there’s a period of transition for the business to go from 1 partner to another. And I think it is a fact of life that we have reflected in our projection. But certainly, the performance in bookings, the volume of deals, but also the quality of our pipeline give us quite a nice level of confidence for the next year as well. Stephanie?

Stephanie Trautman: Yes, Thierry Delaporte. I would just reinforce your comment in terms of the health of our pipeline, the types of deals that we’re winning. It is a mix of new clients. It’s a renewal of existing clients who are expanding our scope. We’re taking market share and vendor consolidation. And it’s also a pivot of our portfolio to the new, and you’ve heard us talk about the growth in full-side cloud services. So very, very happy with our pipeline, the health of our pipeline for Q4 and even going into next year. So I think our growth will continue, and we’ll start to see the revenue convert in future quarters.

Mukul Garg: Understood. And I had one quick one for Jatin. Jatin, I was a little bit confused with the employee cost number which you printed this quarter. If you look at the cost per employee, excluding the subcontracting expenses. This was a quarter where 2 months of wage hike was flowing through. You also had promotions which kind of took place. But your employee cost per employee in INR terms has been flat and actually declined almost 2% versus last quarter in USD terms. So what really is leading to this flattish kind of a cost, which I think which actually has been managed quite well. What are the drivers which are helping you kind of keeping this under check, given that I think last few quarters have been exceptionally in terms of overall expenditure of on employees?

Jatin Dalal: Yes. So I think the most foundational reason, Mukul, and there’s 3 reasons. I will go through each of the 3. One is the most foundational reason is that we have improved the way we manage our supply chain. We have far more freshers who are part of our pyramid. So pyramid has continued to improve quarter-on-quarter. Second is the attrition is lower, which helps us manage the costs better because to that extent, there is a impact of premium, which reduces of lateral hires. So overall, the most foundational reason is that we have managed our cost structure much better. The third and — the — of course, the other third component is that we have released a lot of efficiency gains from our fixed price projects and those get redeployed for our T&M and other work, and therefore, you don’t need — your employee cost remains the constant where you are able to add revenue.

So these are the most foundational, as I say, the cost structure improvements that we have made. The second is also that if you look at it from a consolidated Wipro Limited standpoint, there would — there was a restructuring cost which was sitting in the employee cost line which was not counted towards the segment margins of 15.1% in quarter 2, but it was sitting in consolidated line, which is not present now, so that reduce — that shows a downward path on the employee cost. So that is the second. And third is quarter 3, typically, the employee cost also has a certain amount of accruals related with leave and other provisions, which takes it up or down. But if you want to model it, you model it based on the first reason that I shared, which is the more foundational improvement in the cost structure of our employees, and we’ll continue to work on that.