Grid Dynamics Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
May 4, 2023

There are 9 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Gridynamics' Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Bin Jiang, Head of Investor Relations. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. Joining us on the call today are CEO, Leonard Licious and CFO, Anil Dorado.

Operator

Following their prepared remarks, we will open the call to your questions. Please note, today's conference is being recorded. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that today's discussion will contain forward looking statements. This includes our business and financial outlook and answers to some of your questions. Such statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties described in the company's earnings release and other filings with the SEC.

Operator

During this call, we will discuss certain non GAAP measures of our performance. GAAP to non GAAP financial reconciliations and supplemental financial information are provided in the earnings press release and the 8 ks filed with the SEC. You can find all the information I have just described in the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, I will now turn the call over to Leonard, our CEO.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Bin. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. As you have seen from our results that we published a short time ago, our Q1 2023 revenue Profitability were the high end of the expectations that we provided in February. In the current environment, I'm delighted with our results. This is a testament of Grid Dynamics' strengths and value we bring to our clients.

Speaker 1

There were many positives in the quarter. GreenRx continued to provide comprehensive partnerships with many clients. Momentum at winning new logos in the Q1 with global Tier 1, meaningful contribution from our recent logo wins revenue and success with our geographical diversification strategy. India became one of the largest delivery countries. I would like to also to emphasize operational progress with our Gigacube strategy that will propel the company toward $1,000,000,000 revenue.

Speaker 1

I will talk about each of these elements in my prepared remarks in Q and A. On the macro front, Our viewpoints have remained consistent since November 2022. We're in the midst of a cautious spending environment across industry verticals. Clients are closely looking at the health of their own business and making short term investment decisions. While this has resulted in volatility across some of our client and industry verticals, recession resistant industries continues to invest.

Speaker 1

Despite the near term uncertainties, in many ways, we view the reset across the demand environment It's a significant opportunity for us. During times when the customers are recalibrating their gross investments, another significant way of leveraging diesel transformation solution in achieving their revenue objectives in a cost effective manner, 3 dynamics, adapts to the changing environment. This is something we have witnessed in previous economic cycles and this trend is no exception to the trend. Last quarter, we shared with you for the first time our Gigacube initiative. I'm happy to report that during this quarter, We made a good progress across multiple aspects, including personnel, processes and customers.

Speaker 1

Recently, won business at a pharmaceutical company and a global financial service company by leveraging our expertise in the target verticals of the GigaCube Initiative. As you know, GigaCube is our strategic blueprint that lays out a framework for our company toward $1,000,000,000 revenue. In many ways, the Gigacube is one of the most important strategic initiative reshaping the company. It involves all Parts of the organization that includes sales, R and D, marketing, operation and M and A. At its core, there are 4 Key business drivers, which are guiding our effort.

Speaker 1

1st, Our investment in technology innovation that drive our customers' growth and optimizes their costs. 2nd, Our efforts in moving from our historic $2,000,000 $5,000,000 $10,000,000 per customer revenue to $5,000,000 $10,000,000 $20,000,000 revenue model. 3rd, we introduced Follow the Sun model, Where engineering teams simultaneously collaborate across our 3 key geographies in North America, Europe and India. And finally, 4th, partnerships with notable cloud providers and domain specialists to drive business and Large Deals. Coming to our locations.

Speaker 1

As you all know, we have delivery locations across the globe. Our Follow the Sun strategy enables our clients to be served in an uninterrupted fashion around the clock. In India, we have been scaling our operations. Our new office in the technology park in Hyderabad is operational And now staffed by employees that include from our recent acquisitions. With employees from Mutual Mobile and NextGear Technologies As well as our own organic expansion, India is now one of our top geographies from a headcount perspective.

Speaker 1

Furthermore, With the acquisition of Nexo Technology, in addition to a strong presence in Hydrobed, we now have access to a large talented pool of engineers in Chennai. As you may know, Chennai is a key automotive manufacturing hub in India, and we expect to leverage as we expand our manufacturing supply chain industry group. Additionally, our integration with Mutual Mobile is in full swing, and we have started to implement synergies across engineering operations and other backend options. We continue to ramp up hiring of the engineering talent in Europe. Over the last 12 months, Our headcount in Poland, Serbia and Armenia has almost tripled.

Speaker 1

Similar to our other locations, we expanded our relationship with universities hired interns across these countries and others. In the quarter, there were several trends and I would like to share with you some of them. Demand trends. In the Q1, similar to the Q4, we witnessed continued budget scrutiny and demand softness across some of our clients. That said, we did see some patterns emerging across our customer base.

Speaker 1

First, customers I've taken a closer look at reviewing their roster of IT partners. In many cases, they have rationalized their relationship by cutting down the number of partners that we work with. For a substantial number of our clients, Grid Dynamics has been nominated as the preferred vendor. 2nd, Customers are increasingly diversifying their projects to lower cost offshore locations with an ultimate mandate to preserve the engineering quality. Such trends play to our favor as we have a global delivery footprint and Laquisha of choice for our clients.

Speaker 1

And finally, 3rd, clients are increasingly focused on the business critical initiatives that bring immediate results. This is the area which we are successfully partnering with our clients with our differentiated offering. Welcome, Momen. We started the year strong and closed the Q1 with a total of new 9 enterprise customers in our organic business. This excludes the customers from our recent acquisitions and our commercial business.

Speaker 1

Some of our notable ones, As I mentioned, include a global sport apparel company, a U. S.-based telecommunication company, a global biotech and pharma company, a major outdoor lifestyle company as well as an enterprise edge to cloud convergence company. We're very proud of our achievements and this is a testament of our differentiation and value we bring to our customers. Technology highlights. Innovative technologies have always been key drivers of the growth and success for Grid Dynamics And we're excited to share the recent developments.

Speaker 1

As part of our generative artificial intelligence offering, The researchers from Grid Dynamics Labs partner with our customers to employ large language models and Text Guided Image Generation to the applications in product design, wealth management, data harmonization and customer support. With the domain solutions, we released our inventory allocation optimization solution and we continue to strengthen our portfolio of Supply Chain Analytics and Order Management offering. We continue to expand and deepen our service offering and partnership in the semantic search and Composal Commerce Space with starter kits and accelerators that enable our customers to quickly and easily implement these cutting edge technologies. Delivery location support. In the Q1, our delivery operations remained flawless.

Speaker 1

Like previous quarters, Client continued to support our geographic diversification and chose the location for the engineering support, but not shifted any of the existing programs to our competitors We have witnessed our clients' remaining business with us due to concern around delivery allocation and our ability to meet product and project deadlines. With the new clients, they have a choice of our 13 countries where we can deliver projects in scale. As we look further in 2023, We believe these trends will continue to persist and continue to be bullish on our prospects with new customers. European Business. During the quarter, we made good progress in expanding our European footprint in cybersecurity space.

Speaker 1

We designed and delivered a single Sign on Connector for a cloud native order application system company. We're a leading cybersecurity company specializing in password based solutions. We supported their cloud based products to scale and serve large enterprises. On the digital commerce front, We're leading several modernization initiatives in collaboration with multiple MEC Alliance partners. Examples include transformation Romana Mondalistic to Composer Architecture.

Speaker 1

We're a global footwear brand and UK based Partnerships continue to be an important part of our growth and have become a significant Adrivo to lead generation. During the quarter, we made progress with our Tier 1 partnership players with more competencies and certifications. A significant portion of our new enterprise clients came from our partnerships. With AWS, we're qualified for a program that allows us access to large Cloud Migration Initiatives by Amazon. With Microsoft Azure, we qualified for new specializations that will result in access to new clients and opportunities.

Speaker 1

Our partnerships will focus on building alliances with companies that will enable faster transitional enterprises to composable and Intelligent Architecture in areas of innovation like digital commerce and supply chain. Following this strategy, we established new partnerships with the marketing software platform and the supply chain platform during the quarter. M and A. On April 18, 2023, we announced the acquisition of Nextfair Technology based out of Tampa, Florida with delivery locations in Hyderabad in Chennai, India. This comes close to our acquisition of Mutual Mobile in December 2022.

Speaker 1

Next year is an end to end A custom engineering software company with 18 years of experience in serving clients across industries. The company has built a good reputation and proven tech record across the healthcare, FinTech, CPG and Manufacturing. These industries are key to Grid Dynamics' Gigacube strategy of diversifying and growing to a $1,000,000,000 revenue It also adds 200 plus employees to our operations. We're excited about the cross selling opportunities and expect to leverage each other customer base. The unmatched spirit technologies or pipeline for M and A opportunity is robust and we'll work actively exploring multiple Opportunities, as we highlighted in the past, our M and A focuses on capabilities, key customers and delivery location.

Speaker 1

During the quarter, Grid Dynamics delivered some notable projects. For a global technology company, we built a quality monitor application, which enabled their engineers to quickly develop new features with high quality, improved user experience and enhanced Maintainability of Existing Solutions. By utilizing a modernized code base, this application increased test coverage and introduced advanced capabilities. We expect this solution will allow our client to deliver new features with faster time to market and achieve higher end user satisfaction. We're a leading financial and investment service company, Gridynamics developed a new rebalancing application, which was used to adjust the portfolio's asset allocation to the level defined by investment plan.

Speaker 1

Sophisticated mathematical algorithms were implemented for the optimization of rebalancing results. Our solution helped the combined to reduce their balance in time from days to minutes, while still achieving the same excellent performance. At the major automotive manufacturer, we participated in launching a cloud based foundation platform for the client's e commerce channel. The platform aims to establish a unified global approach to reinforce the brand image and provide an optimal shopping experience With consistent product information and price, we expect it to serve as a foundation for other strategic initiatives Such as direct to consumer sales, 0 emission vehicles. For a multi national food and beverage company, 3Dynamics selected technology and developed a computer vision mobile application for inventory management and competitor analysis Produced by merchandise.

Speaker 1

Built of tailored machine learning model, this solution is able to process images on the edge with mobile devices in offline mode reducing cloud consumption costs. After the successful rollout, In certain markets, this mobile application has been approved for a global rollout. I want to bring investor attention to 3 important points. First, over the past 15 years, we have seen multiple economic cycles. With every economic cycle, GreenDynamics has been a net beneficiary of its customers' world share and this economic cycle There's no exception.

Speaker 1

2nd, our current pipeline of new customer engagements continues to be strong. We started this year with 9 enterprise clients that we expect to ramp up meaningfully over the time. For the remainder of 2023, I'm bullish on our new clients' opportunities. And finally, the third, we have operationalized our GigaCube initiative And see a clear path toward continued growth. Now let me turn the call over to Anil, who will discuss Q1 results in more detail.

Speaker 1

Anil?

Speaker 2

Thanks, Leonard. Good afternoon, everyone. Our first quarter revenue of $80,100,000 was slightly higher than our guidance range of $78,000,000 to $80,000,000 and was up 12.1% on a year over year basis. On a constant currency basis, our year over year growth was 13.7%. The 160 bps headwind to revenue growth on a year over year basis It was due to the strengthening of the dollar relative to the euro and British pound.

Speaker 2

During the quarter, we witnessed growth from existing customers As well as new logo revenue contributions offset by macro driven caution from others. TMT, our largest vertical represented 33.5% of our Q1 revenues and decreased 1.3% on a sequential basis and grew 25% on a year over year basis. On a sequential basis, we witnessed some caution at some of our TMT customers. This was offset by growth both from existing and new logos. During the Q1, retail, our 2nd largest vertical representing 31.7% of our revenues, decreased 1% on a sequential basis and grew 9% on a year over year basis.

Speaker 2

Within the retail vertical, on a sequential basis, We witnessed growth from areas such as home improvement and specialty retail, offset by softness at brick and mortar departmental stores. Here are the details of the revenue mix of other verticals. Our CPG and manufacturing represented 15.8% of our revenue in the Q1, a decrease of 10.2% on a sequential basis and 15.6% on a year over year basis. The decline on a sequential basis Came from our large customers as they readjusted their spending levels to the current macro environment. The finance vertical represented 8.1% of revenue, an increase of 4.3% on a sequential basis and was up 43.9% on a year over year basis.

Speaker 2

The growth in the quarter came from our banking customers, where we continue to grow with their programs tied to wealth management. And finally, the other segment represented 10.9% of our Q1 revenue and was up 17.5% on a sequential basis. The strong sequential growth was driven by our healthcare and pharma customers. We exited the Q1 with a total headcount of 3,744. 798 employees in the Q4 of 2022 and up from 3,671 in the Q1 of 'twenty 2.

Speaker 2

The sequential decrease of 54 employees or 1.4% was largely due to our efforts in our non engineering headcount. The increase from 2022 was largely due to a combination of improving demand, resulting in headcount increase combined with our acquisitions. At the end of the Q1 of 2023, our total U. S. Headcount was 304 or 8.1% of the company's total headcount.

Speaker 2

This was slightly down from 8.9% in the 4th quarter and 8.7% in the year ago quarter. The sequential and year over year decline as a percentage of the total headcount was largely driven by growth at our offshore locations resulting in greater mix of Non U. S. Headcount. Our non U.

Speaker 2

S. Headcount located in the Central and Eastern Europe, India, U. K, the Netherlands and Mexico and other locations was 3400 and 40 or 91.9%. In the Q1, revenues from our top 5 and top 10 customers were 40.8% and 60.4%, respectively, versus 42.8% and 58.3% in the same period a year ago. During the Q1, we had a total of 220 customers, up from 218 in the 4th quarter and 213 in the year ago quarter.

Speaker 2

During the quarter, we witnessed growth in new logos from our organic enterprise business. As a reminder, we only count The revenue generating customers in the quarter and do not include customers were inactive during the quarter. Moving to the income statement. Our GAAP gross profit during the quarter was $28,600,000 or 35.7 percent Versus $32,300,000 or 40.1 percent in the Q4 of 2022 and up from $26,800,000 or 37 point 5% in the year ago quarter. On a non GAAP basis, our gross margin was $29,000,000 or 36.3 percent Versus $32,700,000 or 40.6 percent in the Q4 of 2022 and up from $27,000,000 or 37.8 percent in the year ago quarter.

Speaker 2

The decline in gross margin as a percentage on a sequential basis, both on a GAAP and non GAAP basis was largely due to higher levels of bench. Non GAAP EBITDA during the Q1 that excluded stock based compensation, depreciation and amortization, restructuring and expenses related to geographic reorganization, transaction and other related costs was $10,800,000 or 13.5 percent versus $16,500,000 or 20.5 percent in the 4th quarter and down from $11,400,000 or 15.9 percent in the year ago quarter. The sequential decrease in non GAAP EBITDA was largely due to a combination of lower levels of gross margin as a percentage, combined with higher operating expenses. On the operating expense front, most of the increase relative to the Q4 was from our acquisition of Mutual Mobile. Our GAAP net loss in the Q1 totaled a loss of $8,000,000 or a loss of $0.11 Based on a share count of 74,500,000 shares compared to the 4th quarter loss of $6,700,000 Our loss of $0.09 based on a share count of $74,000,000 and a loss of $2,700,000 or $0.04 1st share based on 66,900,000 shares in the year ago quarter.

Speaker 2

The year over year increase in GAAP net loss It was largely due to higher levels of stock based compensation and higher operating expenses offset by higher levels of revenue. On a non GAAP basis, in the Q1, our non GAAP net income was $6,500,000 or $0.08 per share Based on 77,100,000 diluted shares compared to the 4th quarter non GAAP net income of $10,500,000 or $0.14 per Share based on 76,500,000 shares $6,900,000 or $0.10 Per diluted share based on 70,200,000 diluted shares in the year ago quarter. The decrease in the non GAAP net income in comparison to the year ago quarter was largely from higher levels of revenue, partially offset by higher operating expenses. On March 31, 2023, Our cash and cash equivalents totaled $258,400,000 up from $256,700,000 in the Q4 of 2022. The key reason for the increase on a sequential basis was increase in operating cash flow, offset by payments from net share settlement of vested stock awards.

Speaker 2

Coming to the 2nd quarter guidance, we expect revenues to be in the range of $76,000,000 $78,000,000 We expect our non GAAP EBITDA in the second quarter to be in the range of $10,000,000 to $11,000,000 For Q2 2023, we expect our basic share count to be in the range of 75,000,000 to 76,000,000 shares And our diluted share count to be in the range of 78,000,000 to 79,000,000. That concludes my prepared remarks. Bin, we are ready to take questions.

Operator

Thank you, Anil. As we go to the Q and A session, I will first announce your name. At this point, please unmute yourself and turn on your camera. Our first question comes from the line of Josh Schickler from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open, Josh.

Speaker 3

Yes. Hi, Leonard. Hi, Anil. Thanks for taking my questions today. Great to see the 9 new enterprise customers come in.

Speaker 3

As we progress through 2023, how are you thinking about the balance between increasing wallet share with existing clients versus going out and winning new logos?

Speaker 1

All right. Thank you, Josh. So the new clients It's a good news for us. It's been going on for a while. Our strategic focus on the domain expertise, which is a part of our GearCube strategy is paying off as well as our partnerships.

Speaker 1

So I feel Confident in the growth business and acquisition of the new enterprise clients. When it comes to the wallet share with existing customers, I would say this is more driven by the customer budgets. I haven't seen a decline in the world this year in terms of a business where we are currently participating, but also seen the mix positioning of the clients in terms of getting into the new business budgets. So I would say I'm very confident on the growth of the new accounts. We'll have to see how the current existing card business will continue to expand.

Speaker 3

Understood. That's helpful color. And then given the more cautious spending environment, specifically for cyclical verticals, is your sales team actively Spending more time targeting the more secular verticals and you expect them to become a larger and larger part of the mix moving forward?

Speaker 1

Well, yes, you always treat your customers with respect of the Historic positioning, right? So when it comes to the new clients, as you can see, we expand beyond our traditional CPG Retail Business quite actively. There is more work driven by FinTech. The manufacturing segment, we see more what we have discussed before pharmaceutical. There are more notable research work Joined by cybersecurity and generally, we have AI, all the good stuff.

Speaker 1

With existing customers, there is a little bit of, I would say, Uncertainty across all the segments, I think it's driven by the leadership. From the old time, you look at the leaders Each correspondent sectors is stronger and they invest more. The companies who are maybe a little bit less Strong position there, getting a little bit of jittery. So yes, of course, we focus on a global footprint Wages from Traditional Business. But if you look at generally commerce perspective and our minimized Brick and Mortar Business.

Speaker 1

I would say that even a traditional B2C business is continuing to be viable, But of course, B2B become more and more critical.

Speaker 3

Yes, understood. Thank you very much, Leonard.

Speaker 1

Of course.

Operator

Thank you, Josh. Our next question comes from the line of a mining contingent from Needham. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Bin. Good evening, Leonard and Anil. I wanted to just start with your guidance on 2Q calls for A modest sequential decline. And I'm not giving guidance for the full year, but just any color on What you might expect in the back half of the year given client visibility, the interest from them on pursuing further digital Information Engagements. If the macro conditions don't worsen from here, is there an expectation that we could actually see some sequential growth in the back half of twenty twenty three?

Speaker 1

Yes, thank you for asking the question. Obviously, the last line of yields Prepared remarks probably is the most noticeable, right? So if you look at our guidance for Q1, We had our end of the year reporting, I would say, closer to the end of the quarter. And we try to play the fair game to be as accurate as we can. When you have more disparity, it's a little bit Difficult, but we kind of been right there.

Speaker 1

When we look at the Q2 For the subsequent quarter, we had an internal discussion where we're going to be in terms of guidance. We're still 2 months almost 2 months We're from the end of the quarter and some of our clients are heading the budgetary year starting around June, July. In the past more traditional years, the stability and forecasting of the business usually ends around early year, right, even for the customers who budget their year starts 1st of the year, they usually complete by November. This year, we've seen quite a variety of the decisions. It's not a pushback.

Speaker 1

It's basically it's unclarity, and unclarity made us to be a little bit more conservative. So saying that, we are quite confident in a business acquisition. What sometimes happen, some of the business suddenly brings up more, which is happening, and some of the business suddenly There's a little bit of a delay of the budget. So we decided that for sake of being conservative and fair to you guys and to the market, We wanted to be a little bit more conservative on the revenue. If you notice, we have not reduced the guidance on Our profit, one more thing about the notable guidance for the year.

Speaker 1

I think some of the investors were a little bit confused. We have never gotten Into guidance for full year since we started the company. That's how it worked through the COVID days and other things. We may get to that point at one point of time, but we have not suspended any guidance. We just feel that in our line of business, It's we are more accurate and more, I would say, responsible regarding quarter over time at this moment.

Speaker 4

Understood. Well, let me ask you this. So if conditions do get worse, is there levers in the model that you can pull To protect profitability, in other words, in terms of gross margins and EBITDA margins, do you have the ability to manage profitability In the midst of continued revenue pressures.

Speaker 1

Well, it's not the first downturn in the world. We always stay profitable. The foundation of the business is the balance between investment And fiscal responsibility, right? So and I'm not just talking about the margin play, I'm talking about the cash flow play. Again, we have a Very significant amount of the cash on the balance sheet, but that's really for a more strategic acquisition perspective, not for the sponsoring the business.

Speaker 1

So one element of our, I would say, the dials are how much investment into the GigaQ We maintain some bench, we train people. On an overhead perspective, there is a little bit of imbalance sometimes because we move into broader regions. We had to invest into India and some of the other European countries, Mexico. So we take a note of it. So when you see the reductions I'm down with the total headcount.

Speaker 1

That's a result of more efficient operation of the non engineering workforce. The other dials are Investment into Sales and Technology. Technology organization is our absolute foundation of the DNA, And I'm preserving it to even through the downturns, right? So we bring more projects, more accelerators, more innovations. And Now everybody jumping on generative AI.

Speaker 1

We've been doing work in this field for years. So we're doing the actual for commercial projects Without creating a lot of excitement, we just make money on that, right? So yes, there is a risk always about a further potential downturn in the market. We have balancing those kind of elements, but the core of the company preserving the educated technology team, Scaling the Indian business, adding more solutions with, I would say, more with a fewer On the technology side and having a strong ties with the clients. One more important notable thing is because we our strength is in Consultancy of the technology relation with the customers, kind of end of COVID, give us a little bit more benefit Because now we're spending more time with the clients face to face, we're able to resolve some of those issues real time.

Speaker 1

Of course, in some cases, as you probably mentioned, there were some of the discounts associated with the projects, but only in a very strategic manner would we see Growth after the some of those relations have been established. I hope I gave you very comprehensive answer.

Speaker 4

Very helpful. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1

Of course.

Operator

Thanks for your question. Next question comes from Puneet Jain from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Are you seeing any changes to the competitive Intensity in the industry, maybe some of your peers are that vendors are more hungry for growth and might be using pricing as a level. Broadly, like is pricing like what do you expect for pricing? Is it like enough to offset wage inflation and other margin headwinds Over the near

Speaker 1

term. Our main competitor is VMO, vendor management organization, right? So all our clients, all our engineer organization, all the business organization, they're fully aligned with Grid Dynamics strategy. And that's our it always remains our strength. We move from people from one region to another region and yet That kind of DNA relationship stays.

Speaker 1

When it comes to vendor management, they're typically having their decision coming all the way from the top When it's purely financial, then of course, rate card plays its role. It plays its role in some short term decisions, in some decisions very short term like instantaneous this year and then people come back because the value is still preserved. I think one of our defense mechanism is continuing to bring more fixed bid and part related projects. We also this Follow the Sun strategy is paying out. So where we see that there is need to be more scale in terms of the Organization, we're adding people from the regions we have not been present before, like Mexico and especially India.

Speaker 1

And India business is growing nicely too. But again, we in no form of shape, Even though under pressure, we're not positioning our securities and clients say, oh my god, it's all temporary, just Let's give a lot of incentives to the client. It doesn't work because then you have the conflict with your own methodology. So yes, We have our competition and as vendor management, we are aggressively positioning ourselves. We look at where the Purely, it's a, I would say, budget communications.

Speaker 1

And one of the notable thing, Puneet, We have more and more relationship with the steel level client representatives. That's a big transformation in the past, I would say, 6 to 9 months. We meet not only with the technology leaders, but with the top leaders, the guys who are listed in Bloomberg. And those people sometimes need a little bit guidance and time to understand their own future to some extent. So yes, there are all kind of things happening, but overall, our vector is still positive as I described.

Speaker 5

Got it. And with the second India based acquisition in recent times, is your India delivery at a point Where you can get to the goal of 1,000 or so employees organically from here on and should we expect like change in M and A focus towards Some of these new technology areas, whether it's generative AI and whatever, like are there any even like private companies, which are specialists in this Generative AI, given it's such a new area.

Speaker 1

Okay, Bin Jiang. So first part, I almost hired you. 2nd part, I'm not sure. So, the first one, I'm 100% with you. I gave guidance to our Indian team to grow organic.

Speaker 1

This is 100%. You're very observant. This 1,000 people I mentioned before is continuing to grow and we're not just going to do tuck ins for sake of tuck ins. Now, To be respectful to both Mutual Mobile and next year, they have their own core competency. We're complementing with the Mutual Mobile, their User experience knowledge is already directly plugged in into our clients.

Speaker 1

Next year is a little bit too early to see. However, The growth is going to be driven by investment in important technologies. Now why I'm saying the second part, I'm not so sure. So the journey of NII and the whole artificial intelligence research has been a core part of Grid Dynamics for a long time. We are looking for domain expertise, not technology expertise when we're looking for M and As, Because the core engineering group is still about mathematics, as you know, and we continue to build this capacity.

Speaker 1

Rajin's team is very strong. By the way, guys, a little bit of kind of self promotion. In November, we'll have the 1st Grid Dynamics Conference, Investor Conference. And so I stole a little bit of Zander of Bin, but since Puneet, you're very important with the question. We'll bring the management team in.

Speaker 1

And you will have time to face The entire management team and the very, I would say, complex dialogue, it's still a few months ahead, But I want to make sure that from the strategic M and A perspective, GreenDynamics will continue to use our Valens should focus on our core domain, and that's going to be the strategy going forward. So thank you for that question.

Speaker 5

Got it. Now we look forward to attending the event. Thank you.

Operator

Okay, wonderful. So thank you, Puneet. Thanks for your question. Next question comes from Brian Bergin from TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

All right. Good afternoon, guys. Thank you. First question, just wanted to dig in on TMT client sentiment. If you can give us a sense on how some of the conversations have progressed here in recent weeks, particularly among some of the larger tech clients, I'm curious as to how prevalent the uncertainty is in that base and how your conversations are informing you on the potential for slower spending, The duration of potentially slower spending in that group?

Speaker 1

Okay. Well, The T and T spectrum is broader. So it's a bit of a bifurcated question. So there are some customers, The few of them, very notable one, with a high level dialogue. And it goes into the FinTech area and it goes into the Technology mainstream area.

Speaker 1

And we are kind of, I would say, even gaining momentum. Remember, when the Tough time is a bit more uncertain, and it's certainly uncertain. People see guidance from somebody who they Respect for whatever reason it is. So we have very good conversation. But it's not a secret there are a few guys who are having a bit of Complexity in their own camp, we are patient.

Speaker 1

We're trying to find the leadership, which is going to be a little bit more stable. But in certain cases with some of the T and T clients when they fire a very large group of FTEs, they need some time to figure out their own positioning. So and one of the earlier question What's the comment is, what do you guys do with the priorities? Our priority on the ones who know what they want to do And with the ones who need a little bit of time, we're a little bit more in a defense position to make sure that We get there when the time is right and they're ready for strategy. But yes, the technology sector, in my view or Britney's view, is a bit bifurcated.

Speaker 1

Okay.

Speaker 6

Okay, makes sense. And then just on the workforce, so you had some comments earlier certainly about protecting that engineering quality that you have. It looks like you did shift into R and D a bit here from an expense base. Just talk about your efforts there and then just give us a sense of your hiring plans over the next Couple of quarters.

Speaker 1

Oh, boy, hiring sense. We're always hiring. This is It's been a mantra, by the way. It's an interesting thing because you look at the delta, right? So you're adding new companies and you'll reduce some of your head And you're balancing right now.

Speaker 1

So the question is why. Majority of reduction is coming from non And it may sound did you have so much overhead? No, we don't. But the war has Shifted tectonically some of those organizations, right? And those are not just a low number of people.

Speaker 1

So our first objective was always to save lives of people, but then we need to efficiently operate organization. So as we grow, Obviously, there's investment into India, there's less investment into some of the non engineer organization. Bench or protecting engineers, There are three folds. First, number 1, to be clear what Bench is, I would say close to be billable and how you get to billability. So our work with our clients continue to be very much The personal touch because we want to understand that any kind of short term opportunities are probably filled and if there is a project which is hands we probably address with the people.

Speaker 1

So that one has always been going well with the grid. We understand how to manage that. The second part is the R and D Accelerators. To some extent, we're delighted to achieve. We build the core key architects, which we define the number of projects, which are very critical as Accelerate is going forward.

Speaker 1

And he never has enough people. No, it's just it's a natural of the R and D organization in the service business. I run large R and D organization In the product companies, it's a little bit more attention there. Grid Dynamics has a big hybrid of the world. We are very respectful of our So we tend to take some of the projects and accelerate their evolution to the release.

Speaker 1

So we even added a little bit of a program management feature on all this AI generated stuff, on an innovative cloud Accelerators. We have ton of partnerships. We're adding some of those features to our partners. So I think that Those things are addressing number 2. Number 3 is somebody something nobody wants to talk about, Right.

Speaker 1

It's the old philosophy of 1, 2, 3, right, or ABC. We looked at our capability and capacity, And we add some people to the training in the new technologies, especially the young folks because we're continuing to invest into the internship program. But there is some people we need to and that usually It happens through very careful analytical process and it continues process. So I would not say it's accelerator or something special, but that machine works And a full on all these direction I just described to you.

Speaker 4

Okay. Thanks for the detail.

Operator

Thank you, Brian. Next question comes from Ryan Potter from Citi. Please go ahead.

Speaker 7

Hey, thanks for taking my question. I want to start on The banking turmoil that was seen towards the end of the quarter, I know you've mentioned, we've had your slides in the past that Silicon Valley Bank was A client. So I guess, has there been any like direct headwinds from the banking terminal that we're seeing across Silicon Bank or any other banks? And do you expect any Secondary impacts to show up in any of your other client verticals from that banking terminal?

Speaker 1

Well, not sure of the message about Silicon Valley Bank. We have a A handful of guys working there. It's so immaterial. I didn't even for a second, I was wondering what you're asking me about. Yes, we have a few people there.

Speaker 1

They're still there. And we have a small project, which is going on. We're not going to get into details on this business. It's a very innovative, very Strategic visionary in the Bay Area, but we have overgrown Bay Area from very long time ago, right? So From the priorities of growing business, we are now into much larger banking and wealth management and fintech companies, and You probably know one of them, you're sitting there.

Speaker 1

And we are really into the global situation. Now I'm not going to be in Oracle what's going to happen with regional banking because we have no business there. But my personal opinion is what you see with the banking system, what you see with the Federal Reserve, what you see with other things, It's again this jittering to some extent, some maybe more as a rumor driven than effect driven, which kind of affects other customers. So some of the, I would say, pseudo recession or recession fears Are been going on for too long, so people are just nervous.

Speaker 7

Got it. Thanks. I guess just shifting to some of your sales success. Can you guys describe how much of your growth And 1Q is coming from some of your recent logos that Type 1 versus existing clients and also what's embedded in 2Q versus like New clients versus existing clients and how that compares to what you've always seen in the past in terms of your growth algorithm?

Speaker 1

Well, there's a lot of questions in one question. Okay, let me dissect that. So first on the growth on the new clients versus existing clients. If you noticed in my prepared remark, I mentioned 5%, 10%, 20%. So Ryan, that's not Unreasonable to focus on it right now.

Speaker 1

We've always given people and our own teams A year to grow to about $2,000,000 business. We see that ramp up as fast. So that's why this kind of COVID, it's 5, 10, 20 It's becoming more a mantra for the business. So yes, recently acquired businesses tend to grow faster. So that's one of the key observation.

Speaker 1

That's different from, I would say, a few years ago. More acquired new businesses Tend to be more strategic in terms of their needs. Remember, our strategy of over years, and You've been part of it. I was talking about lend and expand. We don't talk about that much anymore We're not lending.

Speaker 1

We're getting into the agreements with the projects from the beginning. So that's kind of one of the things. But I think you asked a couple more things. So if you Kind to just add one because at the end of your question, you asked something else as well.

Speaker 7

I think you covered it. It's mostly just how much growth is coming from new clients versus existing clients now versus what you've historically seen in terms of revenue growth?

Speaker 1

Yes. So I will comment on that a little bit as well. There is more growth on new accounts. There is some of The existing accounts continue to grow, but many of them right now are in this variable stage, so it's kind of up and down. But if you

Speaker 2

look at the

Speaker 1

trend With the new acquired business, the acceleration is more pronounced.

Speaker 7

Got it. Thanks, Bin.

Operator

Thanks for your questions, Ryan. Next question comes from Kate Kronstadt from William Blair. Your line is open.

Speaker 8

Hi, Leonard. Hi, Neil. Thanks for taking my questions. It's Keita on for Maggie. My first question was on the pickup in bench this Quarter, was that expected or was that did that come as a surprise?

Speaker 8

Can you dive into that a little bit?

Speaker 1

Maybe Anil will answer because we don't have a pickup on bench. I don't know where that comes from. Anil?

Speaker 2

So I think, Kate, you must be referring to my comments right when we talked about as we went from Q4 to Q1, right? Yes. So there are a couple of things also going on there. And let me take that question from a gross margin point of view perhaps as where you're going with that. So historically, if you look at the last couple of years, right, as we go from Q4 to Q1, you might have seen some of that, right?

Speaker 2

In Q1, we had we're retaining some of our engineering resources. There's a little bit of a transition going out. And as Leonard pointed out, we worked through some of our non engineering Headcount 2. So there was a little bit some of these interplays work through this resulting in some of that margin pressure. Now as we go into Q2, we get into a slightly different part.

Speaker 2

As in the course of the year, you see historically when you look at our margin trends, They move up on the upward trend. And you'll see that trend as we go in the course of the year.

Speaker 1

Okay. So it's more margin than a bench capital. Okay, makes sense.

Speaker 8

Great. Thank you, Anil. That's helpful. And then my second question is just on INNIAN in general, it's grown Pretty significantly over the past few quarters and the 2 recent acquisitions only expand that. How are you guys managing that scale?

Speaker 8

And then what is the long term Value proposition for your operations there.

Speaker 1

Okay. Well, That was kind of debated in the past quarters quite significantly. So of course, it's a growth. We had no people in India a year ago. So we grew infinite number of percentage points.

Speaker 1

It's still a relatively small organization. When you look at the way how we operate in every region, it's the same business point. We have delivery management, we have operational management, we have recruiting, so all the staffing is done. What benefited us from making those 2 acquisitions, we were able to inherit some additional Experience Management, so it's not just their headcount engineering and not just accounts, even though If somebody would ask me a question, so what's so good about next year, we keep focusing on India, these guys bring us more into the life science and the medical field as well as the manufacturing. So there is all this, but also the purely good Operational experts in delivery and organization.

Speaker 1

So when you grow purely organically, It's a bit of a hit and miss. We are very comfortable with poised for growth. We're adding more staffing. And one more notable thing, We started with Hyderabad as our core organization. We continue to grow it.

Speaker 1

We mentioned in our remarks that Chennai will become The 2nd growth of the company, again, for a reason. I work with the guys from IIT Madras for Quarter of a century, it's an excellent position for automotive business, which we grow for industrialization. But we also have some people in smaller groups, but also In hand in Bangalore. So I think a year from now, when we look again in our business positioning, It will be a very substantial portion of our company growth and will truly be to the definition, I'll Follow the Sun strategy where all three regions will be all adequately positioned for taking the job around the clock.

Speaker 8

Okay, great. Thank you, both.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you, Kejik. Ladies and gentlemen, that will be all of the Q and A session for today. I will now pass the call back to Leonard for the closing comments.

Speaker 1

Thank you everybody for joining us on the call today. As our Q1 results highlighted, we continue to successfully execute our stated goals. With a strong technical foundation and flawless delivery, our values resonate strongly with our plan. I believe 2023 is a pivotal year for the company as we come out stronger from the current economic cycle. We have operationalized our GearCube initiative, Have a clear path toward our stated goal of becoming a $1,000,000,000 revenue company in the future.

Speaker 1

I look forward to giving you a business update in August. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Grid Dynamics Q1 2023
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