Accenture Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Accenture EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $3.59
• Consensus EPS: $3.43
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.16
• One Year Ago EPS: $3.27

Accenture Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $17.69 billion
• Expected Revenue: $17.15 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$543.93 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +9.00%

Accenture Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 12/19/2024
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, December 19, 2024
• Conference Call Time: 8:00AM ET

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) is a global professional services company that provides a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. The firm works with organizations across industries to design and implement business transformation programs, deploy and manage enterprise technology, optimize operations, and develop customer and digital experiences. Its offerings encompass management and technology consulting, systems integration, application and infrastructure services, cloud migration and managed services, as well as security and analytics capabilities.

The company delivers industry- and function-specific solutions, combining consulting expertise with proprietary tools, platforms and partnerships with major technology vendors. Accenture advises clients on strategy and digital transformation, builds and integrates software and platforms, and operates managed services and outsourcing engagements. Its work increasingly emphasizes cloud computing, artificial intelligence and automation, cybersecurity, customer experience, and sustainability as part of end-to-end programs that span design, implementation and ongoing operations.

Accenture traces its origins to the business and technology consulting unit of Arthur Andersen; the business became Andersen Consulting and later adopted the name Accenture in the early 2000s. The firm is organized to serve a global client base and operates in a large number of countries across the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. Accenture is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, and serves multinational corporations, governments and other organizations worldwide. The company is led by an executive team with a longstanding focus on combining industry knowledge and technology skills to help clients improve performance and create sustainable value.

Accenture Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Revenue of $17.7B grew 8% in local currency, $240M above guidance, while bookings reached $18.7B with 30 deals exceeding $100M, extending market share gains.
• Gen AI momentum resulted in $1.2B in new bookings and roughly $500M in revenue, boosting the data and AI workforce to ~69,000.
• Adjusted EPS rose 10% to $3.59 with a flat operating margin of 16.7%, supported by $870M in free cash flow and $1.8B returned to shareholders via dividends and buybacks.
• Full-year 2025 guidance was raised to 4–7% revenue growth in local currency (over 3% inorganic) and EPS of $12.43–$12.79, with a projected operating margin of 15.6–15.8%.
• Workforce and acquisition investments totaled $242M across five deals and delivered 14M training hours this quarter to upskill employees on Gen AI and other technologies.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day, and welcome to Accenture's first quarter fiscal 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Katie O'Connor, Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

Thank you, Operator, and thanks everyone for joining us today on our first quarter fiscal 2025 earnings announcement. As the Operator just mentioned, I'm Katie O'Connor, Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations. On today's call, you will hear from Julie Sweet, our Chair and Chief Executive Officer, and Angie Park, our Chief Financial Officer. We hope you've had an opportunity to review the news release we issued a short time ago. Let me quickly outline the agenda for today's call. Julie will begin with an overview of our results. Angie will take you through the financial details, including the income statement and balance sheet, along with some key operational metrics for the first quarter. Julie will then provide an update on our market positioning before Angie provides our business outlook for the second quarter and full fiscal year 2025.

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

We will then take your questions before Julie provides a wrap-up at the end of the call. Some of the matters we'll discuss on this call, including our business outlook, are forward-looking and, as such, are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those factors set forth in today's news release and discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the call. During our call today, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information for investors. We include reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures where appropriate to GAAP in our news release or in the investor relations section of our website at Accenture.com.

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

As always, Accenture assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. Now, let me turn the call over to Julie.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Thank you, Katie, and everyone joining, and thank you to our nearly 799,000 people around the world for their extraordinary work and commitment to our clients, which resulted in a strong quarter of financial results creating 360-degree value for all our stakeholders. I am very pleased with our performance this quarter as we delivered on our strategy to position Accenture for strong growth in fiscal year 2025. Here are a few highlights of the 360-degree value we created. Our clients continue to prioritize large-scale transformations, and we are their reinvention partner of choice, as reflected in our bookings of $18.7 billion, including 30 clients with quarterly bookings greater than $100 million.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

We grew 8% in local currency this quarter, with revenue of $17.7 billion, approximately $240 million above the top end of our guided range, and continue to take market share on a rolling four-quarter basis against our basket of closest global publicly traded competitors, which is how we calculate market share. We had another milestone quarter in GenAI with $1.2 billion in new bookings and approximately $500 million in revenue. Operating margin was flat compared to adjusted operating margin last year. EPS grew 10% over Q1 adjusted FY24 EPS, while we continued to invest in our business and our people with $242 million deployed primarily across five acquisitions and with approximately 14 million training hours this quarter designed to help us bring the latest in solutions and technology to our clients, provide our people with marketable skills, and reinvent our services using GenAI. This averages 19 hours per person.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

We increased our data and AI workforce to approximately 69,000, continuing progress against our goal of 80,000 by the end of fiscal year 2026. We are proud to be recognized by Fortune as one of the world's best workplaces, jumping from number 10 to number six. This recognition is important as it is based on feedback from our people around the world. An essential part of our strategy is having access to the best people, and being an attractive workplace is critical to our success. And in recognition of our strong brand, we are proud to earn our highest brand value to date on Interbrand's prestigious Best Global Brands list, increasing to $21.9 billion and ranking number 31. We continue to invest in creating and maintaining thriving communities, which our long-term growth depends on.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

This quarter, among other things, Accenture has partnered with the NGO Instituto PROA in Brazil to help transform the lives of low-income youth by providing them with digital skills to enter the workforce. I am very pleased with our results this quarter and our return to broad-based growth due to our strategy to be our client's reinvention partner of choice. We also have a resilient business model with diversity across markets, industries, and the types of work our clients come to us for, both consulting type of work and managed services. Over to you, Angie.

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

Thank you, Julie, and happy holidays to all of you. Thanks for taking the time to join us on today's call. We were very pleased with our results in the first quarter, which exceeded our expectations and reflected momentum across our business. We are particularly pleased with our strong revenue growth, which was broad-based across geographic markets, industry groups, and consulting and managed services, demonstrating we are a leader in the market as a trusted reinvention partner for our clients. Based on the strength of our first quarter results, we are increasing our full-year revenue outlook, which I will cover in more detail later in our call. Let me begin by summarizing a few highlights from the quarter. Revenues grew 8% in local currency above the top end of our guided range, with six of our 13 industries growing double digits, and we continue to take market share.

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

We delivered EPS in the quarter of $3.59, reflecting 10% growth over adjusted EPS last year. Operating margin was 16.7% for the quarter, consistent with adjusted Q1 results last year and includes significant investments in our people and our business. Finally, we delivered free cash flow of $870 million and returned $1.8 billion to shareholders through repurchases and dividends. We also invested $242 million, primarily attributed to five acquisitions in the quarter. With those high-level comments, let me turn to some of the details, starting with new bookings. New bookings were $18.7 billion for the quarter, representing 1% growth in both U.S. dollars and local currency, with an overall book-to-bill of $1.1. Consulting bookings were $9.2 billion, with a book-to-bill of $1.0. Managed services bookings were $9.5 billion, with a book-to-bill of $1.1. Turning now to revenues. Revenues for the quarter were $17.7 billion, a 9% increase in U.S.

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

dollars and 8% in local currency, approximately $240 million above the top end of our guided range. The foreign exchange impact for the quarter was approximately positive 1% compared with the positive 1.5% estimate provided last quarter. Consulting revenues for the quarter were $9 billion, up 7% in U.S. dollars and 6% in local currency. Managed services revenue were $8.6 billion, up 11% in both U.S. dollars and local currency, driven by double-digit growth in technology managed services, which includes our application managed services and infrastructure managed services, and high single-digit growth in operations. Turning to our geographic markets, in the Americas, revenues grew 11% in local currency. Growth was led by industrial, software and platforms, banking and capital markets, and consumer goods, retail and travel services. Revenue growth was driven by the United States and Argentina.

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

In EMEA, revenues grew 6% in local currency, led by growth in public service, life sciences, and health, partially offset by a decline in banking and capital markets. Revenue growth was driven by the United Kingdom and Italy, partially offset by a decline in France. In Asia-Pacific, we delivered 4% revenue growth in local currency, driven by growth in utilities, industrial, and health, partially offset by a decline in chemicals and natural resources. Revenue growth was led by Japan, which represents approximately half of Asia-Pacific, partially offset by declines in Singapore and Australia. Moving down the income statement, gross margin for the quarter was 32.9% compared to 33.6% for the first quarter last year. Sales and marketing expense for the quarter was 10.2% compared with 10.5% for the first quarter last year. General and administrative expense was 6% compared to 6.4% for the same quarter last year.

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

Before I continue, I want to note that in Q1 of last year, we recorded $140 million in costs associated with our business optimization actions, which decreased operating margin by 90 basis points and EPS by $0.17. Following comparisons exclude these impacts and reflect adjusted results. Operating income was $2.9 billion in the first quarter, reflecting a 16.7% operating margin, consistent with adjusted operating margin in Q1 of last year. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 21.6% compared with an effective tax rate of 23.2% for the first quarter last year. Diluted earnings per share were $3.59 compared with adjusted EPS of $3.27 in the first quarter last year, reflecting 10% growth over adjusted EPS in Q1 last year. Days sales outstanding were 50 days compared to 46 days last quarter and 49 days in the first quarter of last year.

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

Free cash flow for the quarter was $870 million, resulting from cash generated by operating activities of $1 billion, net of property and equipment additions of $152 million. Following the completion of our $5 billion inaugural debt offering, our cash balance at November 30th was $8.3 billion compared with $5 billion at August 31st. With regards to our ongoing objective to return cash to shareholders, in the first quarter, we repurchased or redeemed 2.5 million shares for $898 million at an average price of $355.03 per share. As of November 30th, we had approximately $5.9 billion of share repurchase authority remaining. Also, in November, we paid a quarterly cash dividend of $1.48 per share for a total of $926 million. This represented a 15% increase over last year.

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

And our board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $1.48 per share to be paid on February 14th, a 15% increase over last year. So, in summary, we are very pleased with our Q1 results, and we are off to a strong start in FY25. And now, let me turn it back to Julie.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Thank you, Angie. Starting with the demand environment, we saw more of the same. Our clients are focused on reinvention, which means large-scale transformations. We do not currently see an improvement in overall spending by our clients, particularly on smaller deals. When those market conditions improve, we will be well-positioned to capitalize on them as we continue to meet the demand for the critical programs our clients are prioritizing. As expected, building the strong digital core required for reinvention was a strong driver of our growth this quarter. GenAI continues to be a catalyst for reinvention across the enterprise, and building out the data foundation necessary to capitalize on AI is an increasing part of that growth. Themes around achieving both cost efficiencies and growth continue across the demand we're seeing.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Through the examples from Q1, you can see both our strategy to be the reinvention partner of choice and how we are bringing together our services, our ecosystem relationships, and our scaled investments in cutting-edge platforms like SynOps and GenWizard, as well as technologies like GenAI to drive value for our clients. We are helping our clients build their digital core, including in the cloud, which saw double-digit growth this quarter. Accenture Federal Services is working with the U.S. Air Force, the nation's military service air branch, on a cloud modernization journey to manage its complex IT environment so that military personnel can maintain their competitive edge. We will develop a multi-cloud ecosystem using services from multiple providers to create a robust, secure, and integrated infrastructure. This will enhance how different systems and devices work together and communicate to quickly implement cutting-edge tools and technologies.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

We also provide managed services that foster collaboration and enable personnel to quickly make data-driven decisions about their cloud usage and costs while adapting to changing mission requirements. This partnership will enable the U.S. Air Force to get the most out of their cloud investments to achieve real-time cross-cost transparency, accelerated cost savings, increased efficiency, and improved agility. Our industry expertise is critical to building the right digital core. We are partnering with the BCC Iccrea Group, Italy's largest cooperative banking group, through a joint venture with its IT subsidiary on a reinvention journey to help over 100 affiliated banks grow. Our managed services will modernize the IT platform and migrate applications to the cloud, enhancing resiliency, stability, and service quality. We will also consolidate data and build an integrated cloud platform for advanced analytics and AI, strengthening their digital core.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

GenAI will be applied to increase internal IT efficiency and reduce customer response time on digital interaction channels. We will expand digital offerings, employee onboarding, and payments using our suite of shared finance services solutions. A change management communications program will offer targeted upskilling and reskilling opportunities to ensure employees use new technologies and methodologies effectively. Together, we will help BCC Iccrea Group reduce costs and drive innovation, enabling the banking group to be more competitive and bring new products and services to market faster. Security is an absolutely essential component of every company's digital core, and we again saw very strong double-digit growth. We are the partner of choice in part because we bring both the understanding of cross-industry threats and industry-specific threats with our deep experience across 13 industry groups.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

We are supporting a leading aircraft manufacturer in its cybersecurity across aerospace and defense on critical infrastructure and production systems. We will provide managed services and solutions for their cybersecurity capability, leading to a more powerful and secure program, bringing security by design in industrial assets and the extended enterprise. Our solutions will help provide improved security and meet regulatory compliance. We are also helping with the digitization of manufacturing and supply chains. Industry X grew double digits this quarter. We are continuing to evolve our long-time partnership with a global leader in tire manufacturing to revolutionize the way factories operate and to reduce time to market for new products, accelerating innovation. We will build a hybrid data foundation in the cloud, integrating millions of data points. We will also implement advanced analytics, AI, and digital twin technologies to optimize operations processes such as quality checks.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

This will enable the company to trace the root cause of a failed batch of tires back to a machine or process in minutes instead of days, and predictive maintenance will pinpoint what parts of their process or machinery may be impacting quality and productivity, preventing costly downtimes. Engineering teams will benefit from machine learning and simulation tools to generate and optimize the design of new products. We will also implement new ways of working to attract tech-savvy talent and cultivate a learning culture where employees in over 100 factories are upskilled on the AI-powered tools. The company will look to increase growth opportunities and support their digital-first strategy, all while remaining competitive in the market. We are partnering with Puma India, a leader in sports lifestyle products, to reinvent their supply chain and distribution network.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

This will meet the ever-evolving customer demand for order delivery in a highly competitive omnichannel market where quick commerce is becoming the norm. We will use data and AI to identify and set up localized fulfillment centers, optimizing their size and location based on customer sales. Digital twins of these facilities will simulate various process designs and physical automation scenarios to identify bottlenecks. This will help redefine warehouse layouts and improve material flow for more efficient order and return processing, delivering orders up to 70% faster, with express delivery for online orders expected to double. Supply chain costs are also expected to decrease by up to 10%, and additional features like solar power and EV charging stations at fulfillment centers will further reduce costs and support sustainability goals.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Puma India will be the first amongst sports brands in the region to build this type of cutting-edge operating model, enhancing customer loyalty to drive future growth. We are reinventing all things customer through Song, which grew high single digits this quarter. We have the ability to integrate creative data and AI, tech and strategy, while leveraging our industry and operations expertise to unlock marketing as a growth enabler for our clients. Our marketing operations managed services support their ad operations under a single roof, touching a significant amount of their ad revenue across 150 markets. We've infused automation across their operational workflows to help significantly reduce the time and effort required to launch advertisers' campaigns, getting them to market more quickly to help ensure revenue realization and advertiser satisfaction.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

We continue to expand beyond ad operations, actively launching new capabilities across analytics and insights, data integrity and enrichment, customer support, and more. Our partnership helps Spotify to focus on its core competencies so it can achieve long-term relevance and growth in an increasingly competitive market. We are collaborating with CaixaBank, a leading financial group in Spain, on their plan to enhance customer and employee experiences. We will increase productivity and efficiency by leveraging AI and GenAI to build multiple solutions, such as the bank's chatbot, which has significantly reduced response times and improved the quality of answers for clients, and an employee assistant tool that utilizes natural language conversations and solution searches. We will also build a customer service claims solution that analyzes documents and supports agents and lawyers in proposing the right responses, reducing processing time and assisting specialized teams.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

This will help CaixaBank reinvent with GenAI, and we are creating real value from GenAI across industries and countries. We are partnering with Vale, a Brazilian mining and logistics company, to transform its environmental licensing program, speeding up permit applications and expanding its sustainability goals. We created Smart Licensing, an end-to-end licensing management platform that uses GenAI to scan application materials and environmental studies to promote compliance with regulatory and environmental requirements. This creates actionable summaries, reducing internal document reviews from days to minutes. We've trained over 500 people to use Smart Licensing and established a change management team to combine previously segmented teams, helping Vale plan and execute more efficiency while further reducing environmental impact. We are partnering with Indosat, a digital telecommunications company, and its subsidiary, Lintasarta, a leading provider of data communication, internet, and IT services, to launch Indonesia's first sovereign AI cloud platform.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

This will accelerate their AI-driven digital transformation and support the country's vision of becoming a digitally empowered nation by 2045. The collaboration will initially focus on AI solutions for Indonesia's financial services sector, one of the key pillars of the country's economy. Accenture's AI Refinery platform will provide scaled AI capabilities with pre-built solutions that have a modular architecture to meet clients' needs wherever they are in their AI journey, significantly reducing time to value. This partnership will help Indonesian companies to drive reinvention by harnessing the power of scaled GenAI, propelling innovation, operational efficiency, and sustainable growth in a competitive market. Talent continues to be at the top of the agenda for CEOs and governments, and our LearnVantage managed services position us to be able to help clients invest in their workforce.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Our partnership with S&P Global, a leading provider of financial data analytics and ratings, is driving GenAI innovation across the financial services industry, empowering their workforce to adopt GenAI at scale to enhance productivity and deliver revenue growth. They are equipping nearly 40,000 of their employees with the necessary skills, leveraging Accenture LearnVantage Managed Services, a comprehensive GenAI learning program. This program includes curated and customized content to drive AI fluency and address the industry's evolving talent requirements. Finally, a quick look at how we're continually using our investments and acquisitions to drive our future growth. To continue to scale LearnVantage Managed, we acquired Award Solutions in the U.S., which expands our learning offerings tailored to the unique needs of the network leaders, network operations, and performance engineers, and IT professionals in the telecom space.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

To enable us to scale faster in health, a $70 billion addressable market growing approximately 6%, we acquired Consus Health, a leading German healthcare management consultancy. Health is an industry still early in digitalization, and our investments are positioning us for the continued growth we see over the next several years. And supply chain continues to be early in digitalization, and we are investing to continue to drive growth. This quarter, we acquired Camelot, an international SAP-focused management and technology consulting firm from Germany with specific strengths in supply chain, data and analytics, and Joshua Tree Group in the U.S., a supply chain consulting firm specializing in distribution center performance. Back to you, Angie. Thanks, Julie. Now, let me turn to our business outlook. For the second quarter of fiscal 2025, we expect revenues to be in the range of $16.2-$16.8 billion.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

This assumes the impact of FX will be about negative 2.5% compared to the second quarter of fiscal 24 and reflects an estimated 5%-9% growth in local currency. For the full fiscal year 25, based upon how the rates have been trending over the last few weeks, we now assume the impact of FX on our results in U.S. dollars will be approximately negative 0.5% compared to fiscal 24. For the full fiscal 25, we now expect our revenue to be in the range of 4%-7% growth in local currency over fiscal 24, which includes an inorganic contribution of a bit more than 3%, which we expect will be about 4% in the first half and about 2% in the second half. And we continue to expect to invest about $3 billion in acquisitions this fiscal year.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

For operating margin, we continue to expect fiscal year 25 to be 15.6%-15.8%, a 10 to 30 basis point expansion over adjusted fiscal 24 results. We continue to expect our annual effective tax rate to be in the range of 22.5%-24.5%. This compares to an adjusted effective tax rate of 23.6% in fiscal 24. We now expect our full-year diluted earnings per share for fiscal 25 to be in the range of $12.43-$12.79, or 4%-7% growth over adjusted fiscal 24 results, reflecting the raise in our revenue outlook and adjusting for the revised EPS assumption. For the full fiscal 25, we continue to expect operating cash flow to be in the range of $9.4-$10.1 billion. Property and equipment additions should be approximately $600 million, and free cash flow to be in the range of $8.8-$9.5 billion.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Our free cash flow guidance continues to reflect a free cash flow to net income ratio of 1.1 to 1.2. Finally, we continue to expect to return at least $8.3 billion through dividends and share repurchases as we remain committed to returning a substantial portion of our cash to our shareholders. With that, let's open it up so that we can take your questions. Katie?

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

Thanks, Angie. I would ask that you each keep to one question and a follow-up to allow as many participants as possible to ask a question. Operator, would you provide instructions for those on the call?

[Operator]

Absolutely. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, we ask that you please pick up your handset before pressing the keys.

[Operator]

If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Today's first question comes from Tien-Tsin Huang with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

[Tien-Tsin Huang, JP Morgan stock analyst at JP Morgan]

Thank you. Good morning. It's really encouraging to see the revenue come in here above the guidance range. I think it's the widest margin in nearly two years. Julie, you said that the demand environment is more or less the same. So I'm curious what you attribute this new pattern to and if market conditions are maybe improving underneath here. Any comments?

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Thanks, Tien-Tsin. This is the strategy that we've been outlining for the last few quarters, where last year, when we saw the constrained spending, particularly on the smaller deals, we pivoted to really focusing on winning more reinvention partners of choice.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Increasing the number of our deals that were over $100 million in a quarter. You'll remember last year, we actually had 125 of those. The idea was to go after the demand, which is in the larger reinventions, and that would position us to get back to strong growth in 2025 as those deals begin to layer in. What you're seeing is the result of what we're really proud of was quite a bit of agility last year that when the market changed, we changed. Because as you know, these are not easy deals to do quickly, and we quickly pivoted last year, went after the demand, and then put ourselves in this position. That's why we did underscore that the market environment has not changed.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

This is the result of the strategy we executed, which we're uniquely able to do because we have all the skills and capabilities. We have the mix of consulting and managed services, and so this is what we were talking about last quarter when we said we're going to get back to strong growth based on execution of this strategy, and of course, these are super critical strategic programs, and so when spending does come back and the market does improve, we're at the heart of our clients' business, and we should be well capitalized to pick up on that spending.

[Tien-Tsin Huang, JP Morgan stock analyst at JP Morgan]

Yeah. No, the last point is important. Short-term stuff comes back. You should see that pretty quickly as well on top of this, so good. Thanks. I have my follow-up. Just had to ask it.

[Tien-Tsin Huang, JP Morgan stock analyst at JP Morgan]

I get a lot of questions on the U.S. federal government and Accenture's exposure there. I think it's about 8% of revenue based on some of your annual report disclosure. So just curious, given some of the change in administration and this discussion around efficiency, have your expectations or are you going to change your strategy here on the U.S. federal government side? Any comments there would be terrific. Thanks for the time.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Yeah. Well, we're really excited because our core competencies in federal are around driving efficiencies. They're around helping keep our country secure. We're working with the U.S. federal agency on securing critical infrastructure and on changing citizen services. We work across very important agencies.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

We believe that we're super well-positioned to continue to help the mission of the federal government to secure itself, to help citizens, and to drive more efficiencies, which will be tied very much to cloud, data, and AI. What really makes us uniquely positioned is that we believe that there's going to be an even greater appetite of taking commercial solutions to the federal government. We are very uniquely positioned because we have strong government expertise, but we've got commercial and private sector solutions. We're the leader with every major ecosystem partner. You saw that I was talking today about the U.S. Air Force and what we're doing on the cloud modernization. Our work is mission-critical. I mean, the vast majority of what we do is mission-critical to the federal government.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

So we see a real opportunity to continue to partner with the new administration as we've partnered with all administrations and also with all of the leaders in the federal government who every day are waking up to really drive those three things. So really, really feel good about where we are positioned in the federal government to help this agenda.

[Tien-Tsin Huang, JP Morgan stock analyst at JP Morgan]

Awesome. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. And our next question today comes from Please go ahead.

[Operator]

Good morning, guys. Happy holidays. I know that last quarter, you indicated the high end of the initial revenue guide for this fiscal year did not require any material improvement in consulting.

[Operator]

I'm just wondering if that's still the case as you're now raising the top end a little bit, or are you now assuming any improvement in consulting since you're almost four months into the new fiscal year?

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Hi, Jason. Good morning. And I'll take that. For us, with the raise in the four to seven for the full year, there's really no change in what we shared with you before, which is that at the top end of the range, we continue to see more of the same, whereas at the bottom of the range, we see a bit more we allow for a little bit more deterioration. So no change there. Yeah. And our overdelivery, I mean, we're very pleased, obviously, with consulting and managed service growth this quarter.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

And these large deals came in a little bit better, which is how we overdelivered, and are now raising the guidance.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Great to hear. And then just looking at the net headcount adds cumulatively over the past two quarters, I think we're almost 50,000. That was a pretty big step up from what the prior trend looked like. So can you give us any sense of how much of that was from acquisitions versus organic? And I guess, is there any reason to not look at this accelerated hiring as kind of a bullish indicator?

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

So let me take that question as it relates to the net people adds that we had in Q1. So we did add about 24,000 people in the first quarter, which is really reflective of the momentum that we see in our business. And managing supply and demand is a core competency of ours.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

And what you see is the continued high utilization rates at around 90%. Looking ahead, we'll continue to hire for the demand that we see and the skills that we need. And I would give you a little bit more context that the hiring that we saw this quarter, similar to last, was that it was concentrated in India. Yeah. And I would just say that underlying our guidance, you're seeing organic momentum. So at the high end of our guidance for the year, we're going to exit at 4%. The range of organic growth in our guidance is 1%-4%. So I think that it is a positive sign that we're hiring. And some of it's coming from acquisitions, but we are seeing organic momentum in our business.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Thanks for the comments.

[Operator]

Thank you. And our next question comes from Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

[Bryan Keane, Managing director at Deutsche Bank]

Hi, guys. Congrats on the solid results and happy holidays. Kind of asking the guidance question a little bit differently. The 4%-7% constant currency revenue guide for the fiscal year 2025 is a touch below just the first quarter number of 8% on a constant currency basis. So just trying to think about if there's any reason why the growth would decelerate off the first quarter level as we get more into fiscal year 2025.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Yeah. Hey, Brian. Happy holidays to you as well. Let me give you. Here's how we were thinking about our guidance for the full year and the raise to 4%-7%. If you think about where we are, we had a strong start in Q1. We have strong guidance in Q2, which was really driven. It was broad-based and driven by our organic growth.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

At the same time, you heard Julie say the macro remains the same. There's no change in the overall environment. And I want to reinforce, importantly, what I said earlier, which was we do expect, we continue to expect inorganic contribution of about a bit over 3%. And one of the things that we provided to you was how that will come in. So H1, we expect somewhere around about 4%. Second half, about 2%. And that will give you more of an understanding of how we see organic playing out for the year. And we will continue to see organic throughout this fiscal year. And then as it relates to if you think about it, we're one quarter in. We've got one quarter under our belt. We've got three more to go.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

And as Julie said earlier, we're executing on our strategy, and you can count on us to continue to do so.

[Bryan Keane, Managing director at Deutsche Bank]

Got it. Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe you guys could just talk a little bit about the industry group, the financial services. A lot of times, that kind of leads out of economic slowdowns. But it sounds like banking and capital markets was a little bit softer, but some other areas of strength, and just trying to figure out where that is in the industry right now because we're kind of getting mixed messages from some of the other IT service providers. Thanks so much.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Yeah. And I think it's a little bit different by market. So we're seeing the results a bit different by market.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

I will say, by the way, that we were pleased to see the U.K., as you might have heard, is coming back as we've repositioned the U.K., but with the dynamics in the U.S. market, where it's a little bit better, in EMEA, it was a little bit worse, and you've got a mixed picture on the interest rates and what the expectations are, and so I'd say that and that was probably not a surprise. Yesterday probably complicated that a little bit in the U.S., and so on the one hand, we're seeing a lot of interest, for example, in banking and capital markets on things like GenAI. On the other hand, there's a lot that's being kind of processed with what's going to happen with interest rates and that, and so we see, obviously, it's getting better, but it is a mixed picture by region. Yeah.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Just as a reminder, Brian, as we look at financial services overall, we exited Q4 last year with a -2%, and we saw the uptick in the first quarter at 4% globally, which reflects the dynamics that Julie was just describing, which really placed our strengths as you think about the diversity of our business across markets and industries.

[Bryan Keane, Managing director at Deutsche Bank]

Great. Thanks again.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question today comes from Darren Peller at Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

[Darrin Peller, Managing director at Wolfe Research]

Guys, thanks. Great results. Can we just touch on your potential for visibility this year into budgets and the timing you'd expect again? I know last, I think earlier this year, it was generally in the January, February timeframe, which had moved back up a little bit.

[Darrin Peller, Managing director at Wolfe Research]

But do you still anticipate that kind of visibility at that part of the year where we could get a better picture on whether discretionary is really going to pick up or not? And then maybe just as a dovetail on that, maybe just conversations you're having right now around AI for next year. Obviously, the bookings keep looking really strong for you guys, which is great. Any more specifics on where you're seeing it incrementally improve? Thanks, guys.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Sure. Yeah. So a great understanding of Accenture, January is sort of January, February is where we really see what the client budget's going to be looking at. So that's where we get the most visibility. And so we'll be reporting more on that in the next quarter. So you're absolutely right. We do anticipate getting that visibility in January, February.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

And then with respect to AI, we're just continuing to see in our conversations, and I've probably talked to 30 CEOs in the last two months. So it's been a lot of time and also around the world. So it's been a busy travel quarter. I've been in Europe. I've been in Southeast Asia, Australia, the U.S. And pretty consistently, clients are seeking to do more in AI, but they're in such different places. I mean, I'll be with one bank where we're talking about what is GenAI, AI, why does it matter, and the fact that they're not yet in the cloud. And I'll be talking to another bank where they've been fully in the cloud, and they want to be the first out to use GenAI. And so I think it's hard to generalize.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

You're still seeing that because the overall spending environment is the same, that those who really want to go into AI are more prioritizing spending as opposed to spending more. Where we see the biggest opportunity when companies start to get more confident to spend more is going to be in moving faster with their data foundation that fuels AI and then AI, but right now, it still generally feels more like a prioritization within current budgets, and so we'll see what happens in January and February, and that's why our strategy has been to pivot there, so to go after more than our fair share of those budgets.

[Darrin Peller, Managing director at Wolfe Research]

All right. That's really helpful, and then just when we look at the opportunity for where you're hiring, you mentioned India, but we've heard a lot of customers are starting to think about a little bit even more onshore.

[Darrin Peller, Managing director at Wolfe Research]

So just maybe talk a little bit more about the mix again. It had gone for a while more offshore, looking for better price optimization. But where are we on that right now? Are you seeing any evidence of a shift back to nearshore or onshore? Thanks again, guys. Great job.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

No big trend. What I'd say is we focus on the G2000, so a lot of our companies are global. They really are looking for optimization of right skills because a big piece of why people, for example, use India is about skills. 10 years ago, it was about labor arbitrage. Today, it's about the ability to get these skills at scale. What I would say is that we at Accenture are continuing to develop more because in some cases, it's language.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

As you're kind of doing more transformation in new parts of the enterprise where you want maybe language with skills or time zones. So we have a global network with 100 centers around the world. In the U.S., for example, we've been opening some new centers in underserved environments. We opened a center in the Bronx recently. But all of it is kind of aimed at being very sophisticated. And we see ourselves as part of the integrated talent strategy of our clients. And it's like right skills, right time zone, right price continues to be the guiding with, I would say, an emphasis on skills.

[Darrin Peller, Managing director at Wolfe Research]

Great. Thanks, Julie. Thanks, Angie.

[Operator]

Thank you. And our next question today comes from Jim Schneider with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Jim Schneider, CFO at Square]

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question.

[Jim Schneider, CFO at Square]

Julie, I understand that your outlook, and you're not really seeing any difference on the macro side in your outlook with sort of idiosyncratic growth. But can you maybe discuss a little bit about when you talk with clients, what's the sort of range of outcomes for discretionary increases in the 2025 budget outlook? And how big a factor is rates specifically as a macro impact when they're thinking about that? And do you think that changes materially given the Fed's message yesterday?

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

The rates definitely depend on industry. So if you're a more capital-intensive industry or you're an industry that wants to grow more in acquisitions, the rates, there's lots of puts and takes in doing the range. And I think it's just too early based on yesterday's been a lot of speculation.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

I mean, our business is very much focused on when there's change, and it doesn't matter what the change is, good or bad change, that's where we really partner with our clients successfully. Because if they've now got new constraints because the rates are higher, then they want more opportunity to cut costs. If the rates are going to fuel things like capital projects, we've got our capital projects business. So what we focus on, and I think what we're so successful is we have these deep relationships with our clients. Our top 100, we've been with over 10 years. We understand them. And we are always looking at this and saying, "Okay, what does that mean?" anticipating what they're helping. So that's whatever the change is, that's where Accenture really can help them pivot.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

And it's part of our strength that we're so relevant to both growth and cost.

[Jim Schneider, CFO at Square]

That's helpful. Thank you. And then with respect to the AI work, I mean, you talked about some of the context of the client conversations you're having. But quantitatively, are you seeing any kind of major changes in terms of the size and scope of the individual projects? And what are clients saying about sort of their pivot or when they might pivot to sort of larger, more transformative projects within GenAI?

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Yeah. We're already starting to see that. We're starting to see that clients and the characteristics are pretty clear. If you have a client that's been investing in their digital core, including security and data for many years, and we have many of those that we've helped, they're now able to start to scale.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

And we're starting to do that, and we're seeing those partnerships. Where you have clients where we've been helping them prove it and maybe scale in a part of the business, but they really haven't got their data foundation or they're not moving into the cloud, then what they're working with us is how do we accelerate that? And what you probably heard as we were talking through some of the examples today is that there's a lot of data foundation now being built along with getting into modern cloud platforms. And so we are seeing an acceleration of the data work, which is absolutely fundamental to using GenAI.

[Jim Schneider, CFO at Square]

Thank you.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

And our next question today comes from Dave Koning with Baird. Please go ahead.

[David Koning, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

Yeah. Hey, guys. Great job. And I guess my question just on the fiscal Q2 guide.

[David Koning, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

Historically, Q2 has been a pretty flat sequential quarter. You're guiding, I believe, to down about $1 billion-$1.5 billion sequentially this quarter. I know a little of that, maybe a few hundred million, FX. I get that. But was there anything in Q1 that's kind of naturally falling off in Q2 this year that's a little abnormal or some sequential pattern that's a little different?

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Yeah. David, happy holidays and good morning. As we think about our Q2 guide, a 5%-9%, it's a very solid guide based upon what we see. There's nothing unique in Q2 that I would call out. In fact, just anchoring back to our overdelivery that we saw in the first quarter, it was really a function of the larger deals coming online a bit better than we expected.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

We continue to see that, which gave us confidence in driving and raising our guidance for the full year. So nothing to call out for Q2.

[David Koning, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

Gotcha. Yeah. You definitely crushed Q1. And then I guess one just a nerdy kind of financial question. But now that you fully have the debt in place, should we think about a sequential pickup in interest expense? I think it was $30 million in Q1. Does that go to $50 million in Q2 or something like that?

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Yeah. Different than giving you the specific numbers in terms of how to think about it, yes, that is correct. Because there's certain things, of course, that we see in our income below operations. And what you saw there was the net interest income was lower as a result of we did have average lower cash balances, also lower interest rates.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

And then we also had the interest expense from our long-term debt. But all of that has been factored in the guidance that we've given. And so it's in there.

[David Koning, Senior Research Analyst at Baird]

Gotcha. Thanks, guys. Great job.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Thank you.

[Operator]

And our next question today comes from James Faucette with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

[James Faucette, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thank you very much. I want to just quickly ask a follow-up on capital structure and allocation. It sounds like you're still quite committed to pursuing both acquisitions as well as capital return. Last year, we looked at we did some essentially debt raise to help fund those priorities. Where are we at from that perspective? Or do you feel like we're in a pretty good overall cash position and continue to be able to do that?

[James Faucette, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Or should we expect that at some point, at least over the next couple of years, we could see further increases in debt and debt raising to fund the capital allocation priorities?

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Yeah. Hey, James. Nice to talk to you. What a nice start. We were pleased to execute our inaugural bond offering of $5 billion, which we did in October, and when we stepped back, it was really a routine review of our capital structure where we tapped the long-term debt market to increase our liquidity for general corporate accounting purposes, and what it does is it ultimately optimizes our capital structure and reduces our cost of capital. That said, let me just reinforce for you, there is no change to our capital allocation strategy, which also includes how we look at and use debt. Yeah, and this year, we're going back to kind of more of a business-as-usual.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

We think it's going to be somewhere around $3 billion. But as we've always said, if there's opportunities or not, we've got the balance sheet. So we could raise debt. But there's no strategy to increase debt. But we might if we had the right opportunities. I mean, last year, we had a great opportunity to double down on strategic acquisitions. And it's served us well as we've gone into this year. But this year, we're back to kind of standard around $3 billion, which is kind of the right percentage. So we'll communicate as we go. We always have that flexibility. And I think that's the strength if you think about Accenture is having a strong balance sheet and to have the flexibility to go after opportunities in the market that drive long-term growth.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

And that's how we think about the decisions about whether or not to do debt or not.

[James Faucette, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

That's great color there. And then I wanted to ask about the consulting bookings, seeing nice growth and acceleration there. I'm wondering, and I know it's hard given the breadth of Accenture's customer base, but I'm wondering if you can help us maybe generalize what you're seeing in the consulting bookings and if there's a change there. And I guess I'm wondering if we're seeing a focus on cost control versus potential revenue generation or new technology evaluation or how it folds into AI. Just any color you could provide on what the tenor of those consulting bookings look like right now.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Yeah. So maybe just keep in mind that what we're generally bringing to our clients are multi-service solutions.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

So you might do, as we talked about, we're doing managed services in security. And that requires industry consulting as a part of it to make sure that we're doing all the work. A lot of the reinvention is a lot of process that. So I think I would anchor on there really are two themes that at least when they come to us, they want cost efficiency. Every industry wants a cost efficiency now. And they're looking for growth or other outcomes, speed to market. So you heard a lot when we talked about what we're doing with CaixaBank. That was both speed to market as well as efficiencies. And so that's one of the things that we focus on. And that really gives us it's our unique differentiation because we've got things like Song that's everything about customer, and we can put to that.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

We understand the industry. So the twin themes here is cost efficiency and growth.

[James Faucette, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. And our next question today comes from. Please go ahead.

[Operator]

Hi. Good morning. Many thanks and happy holidays to everyone. My first question I wanted to ask is around pricing dynamics. And you've indicated that the macro backdrop's fairly steady. You're getting share through skills. And I wanted to ask specifically about some of the legacy areas such as application maintenance, maybe the BPO work. One of your competitors has suggested that pricing is pretty challenging because there aren't enough deals and a lot of folks chasing those deals. But could you specifically address what you're seeing as pricing dynamics during the quarter? Any changes?

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

It's a very competitive market, which is what we've been saying every quarter.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

And we did see lower pricing across the business, which has been pretty consistent. What I would say is, which makes sense, right? You're in a constrained, as we said, the clients have constrained spending, particularly on small deals. And so you'd expect it to be constrained. What I would say, though, that AMS, Application Managed Services, is not legacy if you do it the way we do it, right? So what we offer to our clients is we have the talent, the full-stack engineers, the GenAI. We have a platform called GenWizard. And so clients are coming to us not to say, "Hey, can you take over my old applications?" They're coming to us to modernize while taking costs down. And you see that in what the work we're doing, it's very advanced in how we're doing it. So basically, we call it run to the new, right?

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

It's like have us help you run your applications in order to rotate to the new. So we see this as a critical way that we are at the heart of their business in modernizing their digital core. It's not legacy. Same thing with our operations business. Yeah. Okay. That makes a ton of sense. Thank you, Julie. My follow-up question is, in some of our recent discussions, and to be fair, with software companies, have suggested that Europe's softened in the last 30, 45 days, which makes sense if you just read the newspapers about what's going on in Europe. But have you guys seen any change in the dynamics underpinning Europe and/or changed the perspective that you may have as it relates to European demand over the next 12 months? And that's it for me. Many thanks again and happy holidays. Thanks.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Well, so our view of European demand over the next 12 months is baked into the rise of our guidance, right? And we're all reading the same papers. Europe is definitely more. Middle East is obviously different. Europe is definitely in a more challenging environment. And you see that with our growth rate is there on a relative basis as well. But we feel very good about. We have an excellent business in EMEA. We're very relevant to our clients. And so we feel good about our demand environment. And that's fully reflected in the raise and guidance that we just gave you.Thank you. We have the next person.

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

Operator, we need one more question, and then Julie will wrap up the call.

[Operator]

Absolutely. And our final question comes from Bryan Bergin with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

[Bryan Bergin, Managing director at TD Cowen]

Hey, guys. Good morning. Happy holidays.

[Bryan Bergin, Managing director at TD Cowen]

I wanted to ask on the service line, sir. Can you comment on performance across strategy consulting, tech services, and operations?

[Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations at Accenture]

Yeah. All strong this quarter. Yeah. Brian, the thing that I would add to that is we did see broad-based growth, and if you look at it from a consulting and a managed services type of work perspective, we had mid-single-digit growth in consulting and 11% growth in managed services. And as you think about the rate that we have for the year, which is 4%-7%, underneath that, we see consulting now in the mid-single-digit range growth and managed services in the mid-to-high range growth.

[Bryan Bergin, Managing director at TD Cowen]

Okay, and then a follow-up here on the workforce and contract profitability. So you noted most headcount was added across India.

[Bryan Bergin, Managing director at TD Cowen]

Can you just comment on what you're seeing there as far as wage inflation dynamics, just given most services companies and GCCs have been leaning in, and particularly amid the competitive pricing environment? Just talk about the levers you have here to mitigate gross margin pressure.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Yeah. I'll start, Brian. No real change in terms of the market dynamics of what we see reflected around wage inflation. And of course, we are always paying market-relevant pay based upon the skills and the locations of our people. And we continue to see that the same. And then as it relates to pricing, as Julie mentioned, it continues to be highly competitive. At the same time, as you know of us, right, we're managing it. We're focused on pricing as well as on our differentiation. And we're focused on cost and delivery efficiencies in our business and how we operate.

[Bryan Bergin, Managing director at TD Cowen]

All right.

[Bryan Bergin, Managing director at TD Cowen]

Understood. Happy holidays.

[Julie Sweet, CEO at Accenture]

Great. Happy holidays. Thank you, Brian. Well, in closing, I want to thank all of our shareholders for your continued trust and support and all of our people for what you do every single day. I wish everyone a very happy and healthy holiday season. Thank you for joining us today, and we look forward to being back here in a quarter, so thanks, everyone.

[Operator]

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call, and we thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.

Participants

Executives

• Julie Sweet, CEO
• Katie O'ConnMor, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations

Analysts

• David Koning, Senior Research Analyst at Baird
• Darrin Peller, Managing director at Wolfe Research
• James Faucette, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Jim Schneider, CFO at Square
• Bryan Keane, Managing director at Deutsche Bank
• Tien-Tsin Huang, JP Morgan stock analyst at JP Morgan
• Bryan Bergin, Managing director at TD Cowen