Infosys Q3 24/25 (Media) Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
January 16, 2025

There are 14 speakers on the call.

Operator

Very good evening, everyone, and a very happy New Year. Thank you for joining Infosys' 3rd quarter financial result. My name is Rishi, and on behalf of Infosys, I'd like to welcome all of you today. I typically would have said one question per media house, should I say that? With that, I invite our Chief Executive Officer, Mr.

Operator

Salil Parekh, for his opening remarks. Over to you, Salil.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Rishi. Good afternoon to all of you. Thank you for joining us here in person. Very happy New Year to each one of you. Our revenue grew 1.7% quarter on quarter and 6.1% year on year in constant currency terms in Q3.

Speaker 1

All verticals and most geographies grew year on year. We saw double digit growth in Europe and India and in our manufacturing business. Large deals were at $2,500,000,000 operating margin at 21.3 percent. Free cash flow for the quarter was at an all time high of $1,260,000,000 Headcount grew by over 5,000 sequentially, where we are now over 323,000 employees worldwide. Financial Services in the U.

Speaker 1

S. Continues to grow strongly in this quarter and over the past few quarters. We've seen a revival in European Financial Services during Q3. We are seeing an improvement in retail and consumer product industry in the U. S.

Speaker 1

With discretionary pressures easing. Automotive sector in Europe continues to remain slow. In generative AI, we have built 4 small language models for banking, for IT operations, for cybersecurity and broadly for enterprises. In generative AI, we are also developing over 100 new agents. These agents are for deployment within our clients, many of them already using agents that we've developed.

Speaker 1

Based on our strong performance in this quarter and our view for the rest of this financial year, we are revising our revenue growth guidance to growth of 4.5% to 5% in constant currency terms. Our operating margin guidance remains unchanged at 20% to 22%. With that, let's open it up for questions.

Operator

Thank you, Salil. We will now open the floor for questions. Joining Salil is Mr. Jayesh Sankarajkar, Chief Financial Officer, Infosys. The first question is from Ritu Singh, CNBC TV 18.

Speaker 2

Hi, Salil. Hi, Jayesh. Happy New Year. Let me just start with that revenue growth that you've posted because Q3 is typically a seasonally weak quarter. The market estimates were about 1% growth, but you've been able to deliver 1.7%.

Speaker 2

So is the environment significantly better than what you saw 3 months ago? 1, if could give us a commentary on that. And on raising your revenue guidance to about 4.5% to 5%, was an expected lines, but what is the implied growth rate for the Q4 then? Are you expecting a degrowth of about 2.5%, given these margins that you've given? Also your wage hikes, I think last time we asked you and you said it may happen in the Q4.

Speaker 2

If that is on track and what will be the impact on margins once you do undertake that? And hiring again has been going up for the last two quarters. How should we read into that? Again, coming back to your revenue question, if you're expecting a degrowth in the second quarter, will you continue the space of hiring? What is the demand outlook?

Speaker 2

And if I may add, deal wins, while they've been steady, they've not really accelerated. If you could give us a sense of what the pipeline looks like from here on? Thank you.

Speaker 1

So thanks. I'll try and go through the question, and Sam Jayesh will also answer. On the first, I think the sort of view in Q3 and it was the growth at 1.7%. What we saw was the last quarter, we had seen discretionary becoming good in Financial Services in the U. S.

Speaker 1

Now this quarter, we have seen Financial Services in Europe, also the discretionary showing signs of improving. And on retail and consumer products in the U. S, it's showing that signs of improving. So that, coupled with how we delivered in the quarter was the reason where we changed the guidance to increase. Now the second, I think was about if that is the guidance, what is the Q4 and so on.

Speaker 1

So there, 1st, as we've always shared, our Q1, Q2 in a typical financial year are strong, our Q3, Q4 typically weak. So that's the sort of seasonality that we see in Q4, nothing more or less. Jayesh will give a little bit more color on some of these points. On the hiring that you mentioned, there I'll say a few words and I'll pass it on to Jayesh. We've had a strong hiring in Q3 with this expansion of over 5,000 employees.

Speaker 1

And we see that based on some of the discretionary, this will continue, but it will have seasonality as we see in our revenue. For the next financial year, we're obviously not giving the growth guidance. But what we do see is that many of the things we've put in place across the whole company focus on large deals, focus on small deals, focus on artificial intelligence, making sure we're doing cost takeout for clients. All of these things combined are helping the company to execute as well as doing. So let me pause here if there's anything else.

Speaker 2

How much of it was organic? How much inorganic? Because of the Intech acquisition, that as well.

Speaker 3

So Intech, let me just answer that and I'll go back to other questions. Intech was last quarter, we had pretty much two and a half months of intake. So this quarter, the intake was roughly around 20 bps in revenue. Coming back to the other points, if you look at large deals, our large deals, while the overall large deal number you will see is remaining same, within that the net new has increased significantly. So last quarter our net new was 40%, this quarter our net new was 60%, which means that the large deals, per se or the net new TCV of the large deals have gone up 1 and a half times, you know, between Q2 and Q3.

Speaker 3

Our large deal pipeline has become stronger as we see. So all of that has led to our increase in guidance, just to add to the points that Salil was making. Coming to the other question on comp, we had announced earlier that comp will happen in 2 phases, one phase from 1st January, the other one will happen from 1st April. We are on track with that. The first part of the comp is getting rolled out in this quarter and we are working with HR on that.

Speaker 3

So HR team is working on that.

Speaker 2

The question rather was what will be the impact on margins?

Speaker 3

We don't define the impact on comp, I mean, exact impact on the comp in terms of margins. So we will have some headwinds coming from the comp in Q4 and Q1 based on it. But broadly, the comp that we are expecting is 6% to 8% in India and the overseas comps will be in line with the earlier comp reviews.

Speaker 2

I think, Salil, the question on discretionary spends on high-tech, telecom, some of these areas that you could continue to flag in the last quarter, if the outlook on that is improving? And if the BFSI momentum you expect to continue into the new year?

Speaker 1

So on high-tech and on telecom, we've not seen a change. What we've seen the change is really on financial services, more in Europe and on retail consumer products in U. S. Will it continue? At this stage, that's what we're seeing in terms of what we saw in Q3, but we'll wait and see how it looks beyond that.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from NDTV Profit, Haripriya.

Speaker 4

Salil, on the discretionary spending part that you mentioned, is this kind of change that you're seeing is only sentimental? Or you see this translating in the budgets in the upcoming budgets for the companies across the sectors that you mentioned? And also with the new administration coming in the U. S, what's the kind of impact that you're expecting from that? The market expects the stability to bring in a lot more budgets to open up a lot more.

Speaker 4

And also on the employee headcount, the attrition is also rising a little bit more, if not gradually as well. So how do we read into that? And on the margins, what's the kind of impact the cross currency headwinds have had? There's a lot of movement that has happened in the currency. And also, would there be any furloughs or spillover?

Speaker 4

And in the long term, like you have had a guidance buying for margin, and it is there, but also it's quite narrow. And so in the long term, what is it how is it that you choose to improve on the margin part given that there's also a project margin project improvement that you have?

Speaker 1

So let me start off with some of them. The first one was on the discretionary. The budgets for our clients will be on a calendar year basis, which will start now. So we'll get a sense in this quarter itself. Our commentary is mainly on what we've seen in Q3 and how the discussions have been going.

Speaker 1

And that seems to indicate the changes that I mentioned. In terms of the new changes in the U. S, we'll wait and see how it goes. Generally speaking, most people who are the economists and so on have a view that the economy there will do better. That's what our clients are saying.

Speaker 1

But we'll wait and see how it goes. We have a business that works in those growth situations, in the cost situations. So we are feeling quite confident in terms of the outlook there.

Speaker 4

So what's the dependency on the H1B visas? Do you see any impact there?

Speaker 1

So there, maybe you want to go?

Speaker 3

Yes. I can answer that. If you look at over the years, our dependence on H1 visas have reduced significantly. 1st and foremost, our on-site mix has reduced significantly. We used to be in the 30% rate.

Speaker 3

We are now at 24% rate. Within that, our near shore has increased significantly. And within the on-site, the US on-site population that we have, our H1 dependent or our H1 independent folks are now 60 plus percentage. So we are pretty much, we have now built a pretty resilient model from that perspective. And we are therefore much more confident from where we are versus where we used to be earlier.

Speaker 1

You have my question there on attrition.

Speaker 3

Yeah, so coming back to your other questions. You know, attrition at this point in time has remained at 13.7, which is one of the lower attrition that we have seen in the last multiple years. It's range bound. And we don't see a challenge there at this point in time. We have already added 2, last two quarters we have added net new employees, and you know our campus hiring program is also in as per our plan.

Speaker 3

So we don't really see a challenge there as well. You had another question on margins. Margins. So if you look at our margins this quarter, we have expanded our margin by 20 basis points during the quarter. And if I just take the puts and takes of that, 40 basis points came from currency benefit, you know, both rupee rupee depreciation as well as the cross currencies.

Speaker 3

20 basis points came 30 basis points came from a MAXIMUS, you know, mainly from the pricing benefit that we got. 20 basis points came from the expected credit loss provisions and lower provisions on the post sale customer supports, offset partly by third party higher third party costs that we had. And the headwind of 70 basis points was furloughs and lower working days and other costs. So that's our margin work for the quarter. As we get into the next quarter, we will have headwinds coming from the compensation increase that we have rolled out already.

Speaker 3

So that would be a headwind. Currency, we'll have to see how it pans out. At this point in time, it looks like currency will give us some benefit in terms of margin, but we'll have to see how the currency progresses through the quarter.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the Economic Times, Bina.

Speaker 5

Hi. I want a question on the hiring commitment. I think you'd committed to 15,000 to 20,000 freshers. Is that on track? And how much have you hired so far under that?

Speaker 5

And what's the outlook for the next fiscal? And if you can just give us maybe this calendar year as well, what's the sort of hiring that you're looking at, both freshers and overall hiring? On the deal momentum, just if you could just give us a sense which sectors are likely to grow in the next two quarters, while financial services is seeing a lot of pickup. Could you delve into the other segments as well? And with the deal cycle closing, a lot of other peers have said that, that is sort of shortening.

Speaker 5

If you could also give us some sense on how the cycle has been? And how is the large and mega deal pipeline going forward for the next near term, maybe next 2 quarters? And the last thing, you know, what sort of impact do you see because of the recent lawsuit that has been made public, you know, in one of your court filings? What is the business impact because of that lawsuit? And could you give us some color on, you know, the charges because I think some of it is very serious.

Speaker 5

So that's it.

Speaker 3

Okay. So, if you look at the headcount, we are on track in terms of headcount or the fresher hiring this year. We will be hiring 15,000 plus. We are expecting for FY 'twenty 6 at this point in time, 20,000 plus fresher hiring. We do not really give our outlook in terms of the lateral hiring that is dependent on multiple factors, you know, how the demand grows, how the attrition pans out, etcetera, etcetera.

Speaker 3

But and it's also a factor that over the years we have now moved to a very agile hiring model. So you know, we can pretty much fill this in India in 2 to 3 months on-site in less than a month in terms of the demand. So we don't really therefore give out an overview or outlook in terms of, the lateral hiring. But in terms of freshers, 15,000 plus for this year and 20,000 next year is what we are looking at as a partner.

Speaker 1

In terms of the industry and the next few quarters, as you mentioned, So we don't give industry specific views which are forward. We have that overall guidance which we've increased. We've given a view more on what we've seen in Q3, and we think that is something that's a good sign because Financial Services, which was strong in the U. S, is now strong. The discretionary has come back in Europe and with the retail and consumer products expanding.

Speaker 1

Beyond that, manufacturing still remains slow and the other industries are at the same place where they were. So that's the way we are looking at it. But incremental, we see that it's a better situation in Q3 than what we saw in Q2. In terms of the large deals and the pipeline, our pipeline is strong. We typically don't give the value of it, but it's a strong pipeline with large deals and some mega deals.

Speaker 1

These are deals we feel good about given the way that some of the conversions have happened. In terms of the timeline of the closure, the deal timeline, we've seen essentially similar situation from what we saw in Q2. That is where we are extent, which is not just on the large deal, it's on the discretionary, where in those few industries that I mentioned, the discretionary moves a little bit faster, but the large deal movement is about the same in the pipeline. And in terms of any of the legal things, we have no additional comments here.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from The Times of India, Veena.

Speaker 6

Good evening, gentlemen, and happy new year. So your contribution from the top 5 clients has dropped to 12.7 from 13.4 a year back and compared to the previous quarter, 13.7%. Is there what are the reasons for that? So the Street has been expecting a more nuanced metric to call on for a call out on the Gen AI business. So what would those metrics be metrics be for Infosys?

Speaker 7

And also,

Speaker 6

there's there's a term in the industry called AI washing, you know, where people generally, you know, you use AI till bare minimum and then give it, an AI tag. Is that happening? And can you tell me a little bit about that? And also, is the headcount growth the same pace going to continue with generative AI being one of the main things being talked about in the industry. Also one clarification, you mentioned 6 to 8% in India.

Speaker 6

So that's the quantum of hike or is that

Speaker 3

Quantum of hike.

Speaker 6

That's the quantum of hike.

Speaker 1

Sure. Yeah. So if you look at,

Speaker 3

you know, the the contribution from the top five clients, many of them had furloughs this quarter. And this is typically the seasonally, seasonal quarter from furlough perspective that has that has impacted the contribution from the stock price. So on generative AI, I

Speaker 1

think you mentioned the wash or something.

Speaker 3

Yeah, washing.

Speaker 1

AI washing. So I'm not aware of that within Infosys, but you may be aware of that outside with some other companies. We are very clear on what we're doing on generative AI. This small language model, just as an example, so today we have several discussions with clients where they would like to use the small language models that we have built. So how are they built?

Speaker 1

They are built by using the proprietary data that we have, let's say, on banking or on IT operations. It then uses some very standard industry or in this case, a horizontal data. And then the client builds their own into that small language model. Some clients are asking us to for them to build a small language model of their own. So for example, with a telco client, they want to build their own, let's say, company X Telco, their own small language model, which we are helping them because we have the platform for it.

Speaker 1

And this is real, generative AI work that we are doing. Then you look at agents. So to give you some example, we have built for a client. This is actual work, not just like a proof of concept where, we have built a research agent for a client, a large tech company, where they are now using that in their product area to support how queries are looked at and where their own people and their own customers can look at this use this agent. And some of the statistics are quite impressive from going from something like 18 days of time to do things to 8 days of time to do things.

Speaker 1

So these are real examples. We see real benefits with clients. Another example of an agent, we built an agent for audit work for a professional services company. There are 3 different agents. They are now helping that company to more efficiently and with, fewer errors do what they're doing in their audit activity.

Speaker 1

So the work we're doing in generative AI, we feel is leading in the industry. We are very clear in how it's being used across because these are real projects with clients. Almost every discussion with clients has some element of it. So let's say the overall work is large, but there's always some element of generative AI in that discussion that we are involved in.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Moneycontrol, Rishabh.

Speaker 8

Thanks, Rishi. Good happy new year, gentlemen. A couple of questions there. So first of all, on the deal cycles, you highlighted that the North American market is already better, but even Europe is getting better. So on that front, are you seeing these sectors getting shorter and shorter?

Speaker 8

2nd, on the high your trainees, the Mysore campus, this case is now I think the forest department has said the leopard has been has not been spotted. So when our trainees be going to be back on the campus, I hear that they'll be back by 25th or 26th. Also on the, you know, Bupendra person who's, who went out on LinkedIn and said a lot of things on, you know, the culture, work culture. So what are your views on that?

Speaker 1

So first on the deal cycle. So where we've seen, for example, the discretionary work coming back, where we talked about financial services or retail in the specific geographies. There, for the discretionary work, things move relatively quickly, but the overall deal cycle, if you look at large deals, has remained about the same. In terms of our Mysore campus, with the sighting of the leopard, we engaged with the Karnataka Forest Department now and made sure that the safety of our employees and also to make sure there was no harm to the leopard, we had taken all the appropriate steps. In fact, all the employees, we moved them outside the campus.

Speaker 1

As of today, the Karnataka Forest Department has had a view where there's been no sighting or signs or whatever indications of the leopard for several days. And now we are in the process of looking at what the next steps will be. In terms of the employee question that you mentioned, within Infosys, we have a very clear approach to make sure that everyone is treated fairly. We have a well defined process of looking at how the performance is driven. We are equal opportunity in making sure that everyone gets the benefits of that, and we hold ourselves to this high standard.

Operator

Thank you.

Speaker 1

So we are now in the process of looking at that update and putting together the next steps for that.

Operator

Thanks, Vishal. The next question is from Reuters News. Ritam?

Speaker 9

Hi, gentlemen. Congratulations on a good set of numbers. Sir, I wanted to know, what is the latest update on the MacKamish cybersecurity incident? We had a couple of banks coming up saying that they were impacted. If you can give us some color on what is the latest and if there is an estimated impact to top line from that?

Speaker 9

And secondly, Mr. Parekh, you gave some comments about the U. S. Economy, but I want to ask you if you see if you are feeling particularly confident about Trump's return to presidency and now that his inauguration is a few weeks away, how do you look at US economy now that Trump is back? That's all.

Speaker 1

So on the first point, we have made several disclosures on that in the past which hold. In addition, the e discovery process for that is complete. Recently in December, there were 6 different class action suits that were filed. The court has decided at the end of December to club or join all of them and allow for what's called a mediation process and that is the step that is underway today. In terms of the U.

Speaker 1

S, I think the U. S. Market or the economy has done incredibly well in the past few quarters with the way it has been managed post the COVID situation. And everything we see in terms of what the outlook is, especially with what we saw on the inflation and the interest rates, gives us a view that the U. S.

Speaker 1

Will remain a very good and strong market for us.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Mint Jas.

Speaker 10

Good evening. Three questions. If you can just throw a little more light on whether you're seeing deal tenures get shortened. Does this imply that every year you're seeing more deal renewals come up than say in the last 36 months? Then if I look at the sequential figures, the client contribution, not just to the top 5, but also to the top 10 and top 25 clients from the top of those clients have been coming down.

Speaker 10

If you can help me explain that. And 3rd, are you seeing any sort of a pricing pressure in your conversations with clients going forward? If yes, which businesses are most affected?

Speaker 1

Okay. Let me start with the first one. Jaysh, we'll have some points on the second and the third. On the deal cycles, we don't see a change from Q2 to Q3 as we've seen the market in what we are seeing on the large deals. We do see because the discretionary is slightly better on financial services or retail in different geographies, those are typically deals which get done a little bit quicker.

Speaker 1

But if you take the appropriate deals for them, it's remaining the same in that. Jairish will handle too. I just want to say one thing on pricing. We have some very strong positive momentum in pricing, but Jaysh will share the details. Yes.

Speaker 1

So if you look at

Speaker 3

our margin expansion program, one of the track there is value based selling and that is pricing in a way. And that has delivered great results. The 9 months over 9 months pricing has improved by 3.6%. That is one which has helped us expand margins. If you look at our margin expansion, 9 months over 9 months has expanded by 30 basis points.

Speaker 3

Despite the fact that, you know, we had multiple headwinds, headwinds coming from the comp increase that we did last year in November. So full year impact came this year. We had furloughs this quarter. We had impact of increased third party costs. We had an impact coming from an acquisition that we did on account of that, the amortization of intangibles.

Speaker 3

So all of we have subsumed all of that and despite that we have been able to increase our margins. One of the reasons is the pricing benefit that we got. Coming to the next question, you asked about the reduction in revenues in multiple brackets. I think it's the same answer. The furloughs do impact clients across multiple brackets and the clients in the top 5 clients do reflect in top 10 and top 20 as well.

Speaker 3

So that's the main reason of the reduction there.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the Hindu business line, Sanjana.

Speaker 11

Hello, gentlemen.

Speaker 1

This is on.

Speaker 11

Okay, yes. So I just wanted to understand what the demand trends are in key verticals like BFSI, Retail Manufacturing, because analysts had estimated that for Q3, BFSI will aid growth, while weakness in manufacturing will weigh on this growth. But this is the opposite for you where manufacturing has worked like done better than BFSI. So just wanted to understand how these dynamics played out. And also, in a previous conversation with the company, I learned that Infosys Cloud, ARM, Cobalt enjoys better margins than your conventional services, but with a lot of focus on AI.

Speaker 11

I just wanted to understand, like, do you think Topaz will sort of the margins of Topaz will outpace this growth? And another question, in Q2, you'd mentioned that you had a double digit growth in deals below $50,000,000 So do you see existing and incoming clients sort of shifting their preferences towards smaller deals? Yes. Thank you.

Speaker 1

I'll take the second and the third and maybe Jayesh will go on the first one. On the margins for cloud or other things within the company, we typically don't share that externally. So we have no real view on that. However, the way, Jair shared a little bit of that, we have a program where we look at margins across the company in different components. So all of those things are helping us to make sure that the margin appropriately is growing.

Speaker 1

And we have an ambition in the long term of having better and better margins. So that's something that is we look at, but we don't have this sort of external sharing of the cloud and so on. On the industries? Sorry, what was the question? Financial services.

Speaker 3

So if you look at industries, within industries, our financial services have continued to grow stronger. Especially the US financial services. We are seeing revived interest in the European financial services. The retail, we've seen again better productivity in terms of U. S.

Speaker 3

Retail, especially the retail and CPG on back of the better holiday seasons and better client sentiment. So those are the positives that we are seeing. Manufacturing, while has delivered double digit growth, we still continue to see softness in Europe manufacturing and that continues. High-tech continues to remain soft for us. Communication similar commentary, we have not seen any challenge from that perspective.

Speaker 3

Coming to geographies, the U. S. Has shown positive year on year, grown positive year on year after 4 quarters of decline. Europe, as Salat said earlier, we have now had a double digit, strong double digit growth on back of multiple large deals. So overall, we do see those challenges and those changes in the environment.

Speaker 3

Sorry, the question on smaller DCS. So overall, these smaller deals, the deal pipeline has continued to remain stable. The large deal pipelines has grown, as Salil said earlier. So overall deal pipelines have become stronger between Q2 and Q3.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Fortune India, Roopmini.

Speaker 12

Thank you. Sanil, I have 3 questions. 1, if we are to look at the corresponding quarter to fiscals ago, December 31, 2022, if we are to look at the rate of growth of number of clients in the 1,000,000 bucket and the 50,000,000 bucket, it's been the fastest, about 8510 odd clients. How do we read this is, you know, are our deals coming only in this kind of bucket now and the 10 plus $1,000,000 are the kind of deals that would have come are no longer there or, there are fewer in the market itself? And also your days of outstanding sale on December 31, 2022 was about 68 days, which is now up to 74 days, now 6 days of I mean, and given that you have an improved cash flow now, is it a lot of collections that have happened and that is reflecting in the free cash flow?

Speaker 12

And third is, given that you have such excellent free cash flow, would it make you guys a lot more adventurous, look for bigger acquisitions perhaps? Thank you.

Speaker 1

So I'll take the first and the third and the DSO Jaysh will look at. So on the buckets of clients, I think the way you looked at it, so we have a strong focus on making sure that all the different levels of clients we expand, and some of that is what you're seeing in the data that you referenced. Now the deal size is a slightly different parameter because the deal size will be like in a specific client which will be over multiple years. So part of it will get reflected into the month specific year or a quarter or so on. So the deal size, as Jayesh was sharing, there's and even we shared last quarter, we saw a good increase in that smaller deal size, not the large deal only.

Speaker 1

And then this quarter, as Jayesh shared, we've seen also the larger deal pipeline becoming bigger. So that's one huge positive that we are seeing in the change of the pipeline in the deal side. And the earlier point was on the size of our clients. We want to make sure that at all levels, we have an approach that builds up the client because today when a client trusts us with X million, you know, tomorrow it could be 3x or 5x and that's something that grows year over year. And that's part of something we've done internally, which is being reflected from the outside and the numbers.

Speaker 1

So typically, there's a progression over time that happens. And and part of, some of the activities we do inside is to make sure that we share with our clients what other services we have that takes clients from that level to a different level once they become comfortable with it. Now on the point on having so much cash and being adventurous, I think it's highly unlikely that we'll be adventurous.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Coming to the DSOs and the cash flow question. If you look at this quarter, we had, as Salin said earlier, we had one of the highest cash generation. Right? And that is on back of the multiple intervention that we have been doing for last multiple quarters.

Speaker 3

We've had a razor sharp focus on cash conversion. Our unbilled and unearned has come down significantly in this quarter. Our unbilled minus unearned has come down by $300,000,000 So typically, that first converts into AR and then converts into cash. So while you see, you know, an AR increase, if you look at AR, you know, net of unbilled and earned has come down by 6 days. And that has reflected in our cash flow.

Speaker 3

Of course, we also had a tax refund which has helped our cash flow in the 9 months. But even after that, adjusted for tax refund, our cash flow for the 9 month period has gone up by 50% on a 9 month over similar 9 months last year. As we collect, start collect, that's the end of our year.

Operator

Thank you, Rukmini. The next question is from the Financial Express, Padmini.

Speaker 13

Hi. So was your revenue contribution from the rest of the world and $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 category customer affected due to dollar appreciation? And so why where is the India growth coming from? And why is the rest of the world declining? And are you seeing any challenges in contract renewals with clients seeking expanded project scopes at same price and or same scopes at reduced values?

Speaker 13

And is there lumpiness in mega deals because of AI's fast evolution? And your 9 month margin average is already about 21. So is there a particular reason for retaining the guidance?

Speaker 1

Let me start with some of them. First, you can come back to Jaresh. The question around what we do with the margin guidance. I think we will keep the same margin guidance, which is 20 to 22. We are not changing the margin guidance even as you mentioned with the 9 month outlook.

Speaker 1

Sorry, what was the one before that? Dollar appreciation. Yes. The rest of the world you can do that.

Speaker 3

I'll answer that. So if you look at our rest of the world, the reason of decline in rest of the world was because we had some one time in the last quarter, last year same quarter, which was the 3rd party related cost and therefore the revenue that we got out of that. So that has helped those quarters. Underlying growth has still remained strong for us and we don't see any challenge coming from there. India is a very small segment for us.

Speaker 3

So any small chain there will show large in percentage terms, but it's a very small segment for us. So these projects will have some spikes and bottoms depending on seasonality on those projects. As I said earlier, the client segmentation is mainly impacted by furloughs in this quarter.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the Deakin Herald, Sonal.

Speaker 7

Hello, gentlemen. Congratulations on the result. A few questions here. One of your peers had highlighted that CY25 will be a better year. How are you looking at it?

Speaker 7

Also, how have third party or pass through revenues been this quarter? 2nd thirdly, also on the median salary package, if you could shed some light on that, has it increased for freshers? How has it been? Yes.

Speaker 1

So on the first one, we give our guidance for the financial year, and we have increased our guidance for this financial year even with 1 quarter outstanding. We don't have a view beyond that. But what we are seeing is a clear change in the discretionary activities in financial services, in retail and consumer products. So it gives us a good confidence that overall, we are executing very well within the company and clients are seeing tremendous traction with us. So we feel that as a positive thing, but we don't have a view which is going beyond this financial year.

Speaker 7

Also Yeah.

Speaker 3

The 3rd party cost has gone up. You know, this is a seasonal quarter again where the 3rd party cost as a percent of revenue goes up. It's gone up in line of that.

Speaker 7

And also the median salary package.

Speaker 1

So on that, we have no change to announce at this stage. No comment on that.

Operator

Thank you. With that, we come to the end of this press conference. We thank our friends from media for being here today. Thank you, Salil, and thank you, Jaish. Before we conclude, please note that the archived webcast of this press conference will be available on the Infosys website and on our YouTube channel later today.

Operator

Thank you and please join us for high tea outside.

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Earnings Conference Call
Infosys Q3 24/25 (Media)
00:00 / 00:00