EPAM Systems Inc (EPAM) — Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. By now, you should have received your copy of the earnings release for the company's first quarter 2023 results. If you have not, a copy is available on epam.com in the Investors section. With me on today's call are Arkadiy Dobkin, CEO and President; and Jason Peterson, Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to remind those listening that some of our comments made on today's call may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties as described in the company's earnings release and SEC filings. Additionally, all references to reported results that are non-GAAP measures have been reconciled to the comparable GAAP measure and are available in our quarterly earnings materials located in the Investors section of our website. With that said, I'll now turn the call over to Ark.

Thank you, David. Thank you for joining us today. Three months ago, we shared some details of what we are thinking about 2023 and how we saw the main factors and trends driving our performance during the year. As you will recall, we anticipated some level of market slowdown in general demand, but we were not certain of the impact level of this slowdown in our own portfolio yet. We also saw that some of our customers were mitigating the risk exposure due to the war in Ukraine, and we are showing signs of managing those risks by reallocating work streams to other partners. With the understanding of all of that, we were proactively investing in building scalable quality delivery locations outside of our traditional comfort zone to consistently deliver comparable engineering quality across all of our growing global delivery markets. And we also said that we were expecting to continuously optimize operations across our global delivery locations to bring the cost structure back to our traditional metrics in the near and medium timeframe. And despite a number of EPAM-specific challenges, we believe that the market for our services continues to be strong, and our proposition remains extremely relevant, so we were broadly expecting a general uplift in demand going into the second half of 2023. Today, three months later, we understand that with the visibility we had in fewer quarters, we underestimated the breadth of the macroeconomic slowdown and the depth of the impact, specifically in the transformational sector of the IT services market. And as you know, we always stated that our customers are almost exclusively Global 2000 enterprises, leading global platform companies, and venture-backed emerging tech firms who rely on EPAM to design, engineer, and deploy large-scale transformational and digital engineering programs. Our work largely supports their disruptive business model, accelerates growth, and specifically targets new product data and cloud platform development and modernization programs. Such work was an ease in our focus area and represents a very significant share of our revenue, especially in comparison with most of the other companies within the global IT services segment. Exactly that type of work was largely responsible for a significantly stronger growth rate during the last few decades. Unfortunately, it is exactly those programs that are currently showing visible signs of weakness. Instead, during the last three months, it has become very clear that the economic environment is more focused than it has been for decades on cost optimization, which is benefiting more traditional outsourcing firms with strong cost takeout offerings. We understand this is likely a continuous story as the market adjusts to the new economic conditions and the investment requirements change. It means this is a global issue and usually impacts demand and the headwinds associated with the war. We must accept that the picture for EPAM is more complex than we initially anticipated, and yes, visibly changed today from what we shared with you just three months ago. But before we go into what we're doing to address the immediate challenges and share some of our more practical priorities and efforts, I want to restate our view on mid and long-term positioning in the future beyond 2023 growth perspective. Let me start with the following. Technology change and the disruption of traditional business models have been the main growth driver during the last decade. During those years, we saw only three relatively short recessional periods for the technology sector. There is simple evidence that those companies who invested in their digital transformation during these slow periods and those who adapted to new technologies and applied new business models realized value faster than those who just focused on straight cost-cutting and became new leaders in their markets. For us, each of those short downturns led to a resurgence in demand for our unique services and consequently contributed to our historical growth rates of over 20% on a very consistent long-term basis. We believe that nothing has changed from that trend and we are in the middle of another moment when we are about to adapt to a new wave of technology impact. That is why we believe that the current situation is temporary, and that in line with the past, we will see a similar comeback pattern. Pushing companies, we strive to lead to accelerated investments in new and disruptive complex solutions based on rapid adoption of new advanced technologies. With that, we also believe that we will continue to benefit from our traditional capabilities and our delivery track record, which gives us the confidence that we are fundamentally better positioned for future accelerated growth than most of the other market players. Those critical EPAM pillars include: First, our continuous focus on differentiated product and platform development versus more traditional outsourcing BPO and our engineering DNA built over decades. Those make us the best partner to learn, understand, and implement new solutions that align with next-generation technologies. Secondly, in anticipation of the public adoption of generative AI and widespread use of large language models or LLMs, we already have dozens of active use cases across the global network of practitioners in all our verticals and horizontal functional areas that we are actively pursuing both internally and with our customers. Thirdly, our investments and broad deployment of EPAM Continuum integrated consulting services boost strategy and experience, even closer to engineering, and together accelerate the value we can bring from investments in data, machine learning, and GenAI technology by advising on what is possible tomorrow and what can be made real today. Lastly, all of our customer engagements and our people are enabled by our own digital platforms, which prepare us much stronger for our plan and current capabilities of ML, AI, and LLMs to drive increased work productivity and scalability. To sum up, in our view, even with complicated macroeconomic headwinds, the market still points toward disruption and demands companies to transform again to address the challenges posed by many emerging technologies, including generative AI, which everyone is talking about today. But what is difficult to predict right now is when this comeback will start at full speed. We believe that it will be happening rather sooner than later, in quarters, not in years. Still, right now, we obviously face immediate and different challenges. So let us talk about our last quarter and now thinking about the rest of 2023. With all the complexities of the current environment, our performance in the first quarter was mixed. While that gives us a better start to move further into the complex 2023 environment, we have to acknowledge that the combination of conditions we talked about today of general pullback and delays in transformation spending, along with the rising concerns voiced by our customers, has now translated into a revision of our initial revenue expectations for this year. With this new view, we are adjusting our full-year revenues and EPS outlook. During the year, we expect to focus more on sequential growth metrics rather than our traditional year-over-year trends. Jason will discuss all relevant details in his section. For now, as long as we are seeing contracted buyers for new builds businesses, we will be adapting a three-pronged approach to navigate the current environment. The first is pushing all possible efforts to address our customers' most pressing tactical items, including the mix of engagement models, cost takeouts, and consolidation priorities, while protecting our share of wallet and long-term relationships, all possibly leading to lower short-term profitability metrics. The second is quickly winning and growing new business through increased focus on sales and go-to-market motions and partnerships, especially across those champions who would like to use this slow time to build a competitive advantage. Over the last two to three quarters, our global business field organization and specialized practice teams have focused on developing new offerings, new engagement models, and new ways of working with our customers and have had some success in gaining new momentum and acquiring new logos, which will still take some time to realize as larger revenue impacts down the line, especially in the current economic climate. The third involves continuously investing in our strategic priorities, which are aligned with what we communicated before. We are focusing on the expansion of differentiated consulting capabilities and cloud capability while building and improving our work by delivering strategy implementation simultaneously. This will expand our engineering DNA across all strategic global delivery locations in anticipation of the sharp return of demand for next-generation transformational services. With that, as part of our continuous investment strategy, I want to share some updates on our global delivery expansion programs. During the past quarter, we have made good progress in both maintaining the level of delivery quality in Eastern and Central Europe and strengthening such quality in Central and Western Asia. We have benefited from integrating strong EPAM talent moving to many new locations across the regions. As part of our heritage and our core differentiation, Eastern and Central Europe delivery and most notably our Ukrainian operation will continue to be a cornerstone of our proposition while we accelerate our investments in new centers of excellence and continue to hire across our global footprint for high-demand skills. As part of the global delivery strategy, we continue to focus on building out our two currently fastest-growing regions, India and Latin America. In addition to opening several new locations across those geographies, we are pleased to see sizable work streams starting and expanding there, not only from our existing clients but also with brand-new logos, who are attracted by the advantages demonstrated by EPAM in those regions. It's also important to mention that the configuration of our client footprint in those still relatively new geographies now very much represents our traditional client's mix, including some of our top 10 customers, as well as new ones across multiple verticals from large corporations to technology platform firms and software product companies. In our view, it's a very good illustration of the quality of the services we are delivering from the region, confirming that our continued investments into engineering excellence programs, education, and integrated delivery platforms are bringing the results we expect to achieve to date. With the experience we've gained over the past few years, we can now set up new locations across EPAM's global footprint in months rather than years by leveraging all elements of our digital platform ecosystem and strong talent acquisition capabilities. We believe that during the next few years, we will be able to build the most geo-balanced delivery talent platform on the market. To conclude, we believe that while we are experiencing and addressing specific but still temporary challenges, fundamentally, we are moving in the right direction. Our strategy for future accelerated growth is based on delivering complex business solutions driven by advanced disruptive technology and quality engineering. Many of these solutions require unique alignment of consulting and implementation services and are specifically attractive to the client base consisting of leading global enterprises whose markets are driven and disrupted by continuous technological transformations. We do believe that such enterprises will have to return to significant investments into technology build components to lead and further disrupt their respective markets, and they will need partners like EPAM to progress. With that, I would like to pass to Jason to share more details and numbers for Q1 and for our change in outlook for the rest of the year.

Thank you, Ark, and good morning, everyone. Before covering our Q1 results, I wanted to remind you that in addition to our customary non-GAAP adjustments, expenses related to EPAM’s management commitment to Ukraine and costs associated with the exit of our Russian operations, business continuity resources, and accelerated employee relocations have been excluded from non-GAAP financial results. We've included additional disclosures specific to these and other related items in our Q1 earnings release. In the first quarter, EPAM delivered solid results. The company generated revenue of $1.21 billion, a year-over-year increase of 3.4% on a reported basis and 4.9% in constant currency terms, reflecting a negative foreign exchange impact of 150 basis points. Additionally, the reduction in Russian customer revenues resulting from our decision to exit the market had a 220 basis point negative impact on revenue growth. Excluding Russia revenues, year-over-year revenue growth would have been 5.6% reported and over 7% on a constant currency basis. Beginning with our industry verticals, travel and consumer grew 4.9%, driven by solid growth in travel and hospitality and muted growth in retail. The ongoing exit of Russia operations also impacted growth in this vertical. Absent the impact, growth would have been 6.7%. Financial services grew 4.1%, with strong growth coming from asset management and insurance services. Excluding Russian customer revenues, growth would have been 12.5%. Business information and media delivered 4.2% growth in the quarter. Software and hi-tech produced no growth. The lack of growth in the quarter reflected a reduction in revenue from a former top 20 customer we mentioned in our Q4 earnings call and generally slower growth in revenues across a range of customers in the vertical. Life sciences and healthcare declined 10.1%. Growth in the quarter was impacted by the ramp-down of a large transformational program mentioned during our Q4 earnings call. And finally, our emerging verticals delivered strong growth of 14.7%, driven by clients in manufacturing, automotive, and energy. From a geographic perspective, the Americas, our largest region representing 59% of our Q1 revenues, grew 3.4% year-over-year or 4% in constant currency. EMEA, representing 38% of our Q1 revenues, grew 10% year-over-year or 13.3% in constant currency. CEE, representing 1% of our Q1 revenues, contracted 68.8% year-over-year or 70.8% in constant currency. Revenue in the quarter was impacted by our decision to exit our Russian operations and the resulting ramp-down of services to Russian customers. Finally, APAC declined 9.4% year-over-year or 6.7% in constant currency terms, and now represents 2% of our revenues. Revenue in the quarter was impacted primarily by the ramp-down of work at a financial services client. In Q1, revenues from our top 20 clients grew 5.3% year-over-year, while revenues from clients outside our top 20 grew 2.3%. And moving down the income statement, our GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 29.3% compared to 33.4% in Q1 of last year. Non-GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 31.5% compared to 33.3% for the same quarter last year. Gross margin in Q1 2023 reflects a negative impact of lower utilization and some year-over-year compression in account margins. GAAP SG&A was 17.5% of revenues compared to 20.3% in Q1 of last year. Non-GAAP SG&A came in at 15.3% of revenues compared to 15.6% in the same period last year. Both GAAP and non-GAAP SG&A expense in Q1 2023 include $9.5 million in severance-related expenses incurred as the company works to better align its cost structure with the current demand environment. GAAP income from operations was $120 million or 9.9% of revenue in the quarter compared to $129 million or 11% of revenue in Q1 of last year. Non-GAAP income from operations was $178 million or 14.7% of revenue in the quarter compared to $189 million or 16.1% of revenue in Q1 of last year. Our GAAP effective tax rate for the quarter came in at 19.6% versus our Q1 guide of 18%, primarily due to lower excess tax benefits related to stock-based compensation. Our non-GAAP effective tax rate, which excludes excess tax benefits, was 22.9%. Diluted earnings per share on a GAAP basis was $1.73. Our non-GAAP diluted EPS was $2.47, reflecting a $0.02 decrease compared to the same quarter in 2022. In Q1, there were approximately 59.3 million diluted shares outstanding. Turning to cash flow and our balance sheet, cash flow from operations for Q1 was a positive $87 million compared to a negative $52 million in the same quarter of 2022. Q1 2022 cash flow was negatively impacted by an increase in DSO and the payment of a higher level of company-wide variable compensation based on our 2021 performance. Free cash flow was $79 million compared to a negative free cash flow of $75 million in the same quarter last year. We ended the quarter with over $1.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents. At the end of Q1, DSO was 69 days, compared to 70 days for Q4 2022 and 69 days for the same quarter last year. Looking ahead, we expect DSO will remain steady throughout 2023. Now moving on to a few operational metrics. We ended Q1 with more than 51,100 consultants, designers, engineers, trainers, and architects. Production headcount declined 7.1% compared to Q1 2022. The net decrease in headcount is a result of the reduction in Russia-based headcount, a lower level of hiring across the organization, and a largely completed program designed to produce modest levels of encouraged attrition. Our total headcount for the quarter was more than 57,415 employees. Utilization was 74.9% compared to 78.4% in Q1 of last year and 73.6% in Q4 2022. Now let's turn to our business outlook. We are beginning to see the results of our focus on generating demand from new programs and customers. However, we are also seeing a continuation of the uneven demand environment that began in Q4 2022. The global economic environment has not yet stabilized sufficiently to support client confidence. The demand environment continues to be characterized by slower decision-making, caution around spending, and program ramp-downs due to uncertainty in certain client end markets. As a result, our overall level of demand is not improving sufficiently to support our initial revenue outlook. As highlighted during our Q4 earnings call, our operations in Ukraine have not been materially impacted, and our teams remain highly focused on maintaining uninterrupted production. Our guidance assumes that we will continue to be able to deliver from our Ukrainian delivery centers at productivity levels at or somewhat lower than those achieved in 2022. Consistent with previous cycles, we will continue to thoughtfully calibrate our expense levels while investing in our capabilities and focusing on the preservation of our talent in preparation for a return of demand. We expect headcount will continue to decline somewhat in Q2 due to limited hiring and more typical attrition, and we will limit hiring in the second half until we see improving demand. We expect utilization in the mid-70s throughout the remainder of the year. As a reminder, the exit of our Russian operations and the reduction in Russian customer revenues produce a tougher year-over-year revenue comparison primarily in the first half of 2023. Moving to our full-year outlook, we now expect revenue to be in the range of $4.95 billion to $5 billion, reflecting a year-over-year growth rate of approximately 3%. On an organic constant currency basis, excluding the impact of the exit from Russia, we expect revenue growth to be just over 3% at the midpoint of the range. We're currently expecting sequential growth in both Q3 and Q4. However, we no longer expect to be able to generate double-digit year-over-year growth in either quarter. We expect GAAP income from operations to continue to be in the range of 11.5% to 12.5%, and non-GAAP income from operations to continue to be in the range of 15.5% to 16.5%. We expect our GAAP effective tax rate to continue to be approximately 21%, and our non-GAAP effective tax rate, which excludes excess tax benefits related to stock-based compensation, will also continue to be 23%. For earnings per share, we expect GAAP diluted EPS to now be in the range of $8.11 to $8.31 for the full year, and non-GAAP diluted EPS to now be in the range of $10.60 to $10.80 for the full year. We now expect a weighted average share count of 59.4 million fully diluted shares outstanding. Now moving to our Q2 2023 outlook, we expect revenues to be in the range of $1.195 billion to $1.205 billion, producing a year-over-year growth rate of less than 1%. On an organic constant currency basis, excluding the impact of the exit from Russia, we expect revenue growth to also be less than 1% at the midpoint of the range. For the second quarter, we expect GAAP income from operations to be in the range of 10% to 11% and non-GAAP income from operations to be in the range of 14% to 15%. We expect our GAAP effective tax rate to be approximately 20%, and our non-GAAP effective tax rate, which excludes excess tax benefits related to stock-based compensation, to be approximately 23%. For earnings per share, we expect GAAP diluted EPS to be in the range of $1.82 to $1.90 for the quarter, and non-GAAP diluted EPS to be in the range of $2.38 to $2.46 for the quarter. We expect a weighted average share count of 59.4 million diluted shares outstanding. Finally, a few key assumptions that support our GAAP to non-GAAP measurements in the second quarter and remainder of the year. Stock-based compensation expense is expected to be approximately $33 million for Q2, and $38 million for each of the remaining quarters. Amortization of intangibles is expected to be approximately $6 million for each of the remaining quarters. The impact of foreign exchange is expected to be negligible for the remainder of the year. Tax effect of non-GAAP adjustments is expected to be $9.5 million for Q2 and $9 million for each of the remaining quarters. We expect excess tax benefits to be around $6 million for Q2, $4 million for Q3, and $2 million for Q4. In addition to these customary GAAP to non-GAAP adjustments and consistent with the prior quarter in 2022, we expect to have ongoing non-GAAP adjustments in 2023 resulting from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Please see our Q1 earnings release for a detailed reconciliation of our GAAP to non-GAAP guidance. Finally, one more assumption outside of our GAAP to non-GAAP items. With our significant cash position, we are generating a healthy level of interest income. We had expected an elevated level of interest income relative to past years when we developed our original full-year guidance. However, due to the larger positive impact on EPS in 2023, we are updating our assumptions regarding interest income and making them explicit. For the remainder of the year, we expect interest income to be $8 million for Q2 and $7 million for each of the remaining quarters. Lastly, I'd like to thank our employees for their continued dedication and focus on our customers.

Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate all the color and details so far this morning. It sounds like most of your revision and view for the rest of the year is attributable to the macroeconomic environment. Just wondering if you can kind of give more detail on the underlying assumptions there. And I know back in the previous quarter you had talked about that there was some engagement and re-engagement that you need to do with clients. I'm just wondering how that has gone and if that engagement and those kinds of conversations are impacting your outlook at all right now.

Good morning, everybody. I think you're asking if the recent trends impacting our clients or if the macroeconomic conditions are the main driver. I think both have played a role in our previous estimation. At this point, we see the economy driving client behavior, and the biggest impact on our guidance and forecast is what is happening in the market. If you remember, our previous guidance call was at the beginning of February, and already in early March we heard news from the banking sector in North America, which quickly translated to broader concerns. Specifically, the focus on transformational programs has become less favorable. So yes, we believe it’s a general slowdown due to these latest events.

Thank you for that, Ark. Regarding the ramp downs and softness, do you have any insights into how significant those are? It seems you believe the issue is widespread, but can you provide more clarity on the ramp downs? Do you think any of this is specific to EPAM because of delivery challenges, or is it more influenced by macroeconomic factors? I want to ensure I fully understand the situation.

Yes, exactly what I’m saying. Clearly, after our previous call, some new things were happening, and now that were driven by client questions based on the economy.

Hey, thanks guys. If you could help just by maybe dissecting a little bit more around the demand environment versus what you're seeing that's more specific to some of the regions you're in now, some of the newer regions. What I mean by that is really just whether or not there's been anything that is tougher to execute from some of the new regions you've built into post-Russia, post-Ukraine or is that really not a factor? And instead, it's really just demand at the end of the day you have all the talent you need executing the way you should. And then I guess a quick follow-on related to that is just pricing dynamics to pass through. What's the latest on the wage environment in those newer regions and how you are executing on that and your ability to pass through on pricing around that?

I think that's what we're trying to bring kind of clarity during this morning's discussion. Definitely, when the economy is acting like this, clients are reacting accordingly, and the question on pricing and discounts is coming into play. This began several quarters ago as we discussed, but it's become very visible, specifically today. So let's answer your question directly. While there are still transformational deals happening, it’s not at the level we experienced 12 months ago. We are focusing on ensuring we maintain our relationships and continuously serve our clients.

So, no real challenges in terms of delivery or the ability to add headcount or get work done. But as Ark said, it's really an issue of the uncertain macro environment that is clearly more uncertain than we expected by the time we get to summer. We think that's having an impact on customers' investment decisions. From a wage standpoint, we did do our promotional campaign here in Q2. We’ve clearly seen wage inflation over the last year, but we think you'll see a more muted wage inflation environment through the remainder of the year. The pricing environment is not supportive of price increases, and we're finding both clients are cautious in terms of spend and in terms of rates, even requiring that we sharpen our pencils a bit.

Just a very quick follow-up. You all have always done a good job of having more visibility than most, and you try to take that into your guidance being conservative at times. I mean, how do we feel about it now? I know you've probably given the macro uncertainty and wanted to take a conservative approach as possible in this case, is that fair?

Listen, we understand what you're asking, but we reflect on exactly what we're seeing right now. Unfortunately, last quarter we were seeing this differently.

Understood.

The stability right now is very different; this is a new environment. I don't think we can compare it with the second quarter of 2020, as reactions from clients were much more sharpened. It’s different now, but yes, that's what we see. Everyone needs to consider quarter-by-quarter adjustments since that's what we will be monitoring closely.

Hi, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. First one, just a follow-up on budget behavior. So I'm curious if you're seeing clients cut and outright cancel programs or if this is more of a deferral and delay of spend. So more like a wait-and-see approach? I'm trying to understand if there is potential pent-up recovery that could actually form later this year or if the potential budget dollars are more or less out for 2023?

I think we are trying to educate about how we're thinking about it. Based on what we saw previously, we're considering quarters, but how many quarters that depends, two, three, or four on the timeline of when technology restoration will occur. That's our belief. We understand the trends, and one cannot rely on short delays. But we believe in transformation occurrences to be ongoing.

We saw those couple of ramp-downs that we talked about, one in the healthcare space and one in the tech space, and those were driven by client decisions based on how they were looking at their future revenues and profits. What we're seeing today is more trimming or adjustments to spend, which is usually contraction. So Bryan, it’s not clients saying they are going to stop work entirely; they are just reducing their spend. As Ark said, we believe these enterprises have to return to necessary investments to remain competitive and successful in the future.

And it’s a combination of all different environments affecting this. When someone tells you they will delay for one quarter, and then another, you see it’s not a cancellation, but it doesn’t allow us to count on this for revenues.

Yes, so with the updated outlook, we're likely to see utilization remain more in the mid-70s rather than the high 70s in the second half. However, we expect characteristics in the second half to have generally higher bill rates in Q3, and thus we expect gross margins to trend back as well. We also aim to maintain SG&A below 15% of revenue.

Thank you. Good morning. I wonder if I could just go back to a question that was asked a little bit earlier. If I look at your guidance for the year, using the midpoint of $5 billion, you're kind of guiding to sequential increases in revenue in the back half of the year. So does that imply you have some visibility on backlog or new ramps that give you confidence that revenue growth will accelerate sequentially in the back half of the year?

Yes, we see programs that have started to show up in conversations based on this; we expect a moderate increase in demand. If you consider how technology is changing as we speak, a lot of experimentation is happening, and we see a lot of conversation across multiple industry components.

Despite the guidance for Q2 and what you're seeing in top 20 versus those outside of it, we are experiencing a limited amount of new logo activity. However, many contracts and new MSAs are being signed. The challenge is that most of those new programs are currently relatively small and do not substantially contribute to revenue growth as they would have in previous years. We remain hopeful they will grow over time.

I don't think we've seen during the last 90 days any major clients shifting work to other vendors, but instead we are experiencing delays with strategic programs. There is a significant consolidation effort across the industry concerning pricing, which could impact our portfolio.

Got it. And just to go back to your comments about clients trimming budgets, I understand this isn’t a drastic cut, but more of a wait-and-see approach?

Yes, this trend is ongoing. There is an expectation that while current budgets are adjusted, there will be significant investment needs moving forward.

Yes, we will aim for margins to remain steady, but recognize the need to control discretionary costs while investing in capabilities.

Thank you again for joining us. It’s an unusual period in our lifecycle after significant growth, and we are seeing something different now. However, we believe that technology will drive the future. We didn’t talk too much about all the advancements in AI, but we do believe that a lot of engagement in digital ecosystems will need rebuilding soon and this will propel competition. Partners will look to us for assistance in driving future growth.