Earnings Call Transcript - EXLS Q1 2020

Steven Barlow, Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, Victor. Hello and thanks to everyone for joining EXL’s first quarter 2020 financial results conference call. I’m Steve Barlow, EXL’s Vice President of Investor Relations. With me today by telephone are Rohit Kapoor, our Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Maurizio Nicolelli, our Chief Financial Officer. We hope that you had an opportunity to review our Q1 2020 earnings release and 8-K we issued this morning. We’ve also updated our investor fact sheet in the Investor Relations section of EXL’s website, which recasts 2017 through 2019 revenues and gross margins as our reportable segments have changed. As you know, some of the matters we’ll discuss in this call are forward-looking, please keep in mind that these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic conditions, those factors set forth in today’s press release, discussed in the company’s periodic reports and other documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. EXL assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call. During our call today, we may reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information for investors. Reconciliation of these measures to GAAP can be found in our press release as well as the Investor Fact Sheet. Now I’ll turn the call over to Rohit Kapoor, EXL’s Chief Executive Officer. Rohit?

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Q1 2020 earnings call. I hope all of you and your families are safe and healthy. As you know, COVID-19 is causing maximum disruption around the world and is impacting our business as well. At EXL, our culture and values are guiding our response to this crisis. Our top priorities are the health and safety of our employees, the continuity of our clients’ businesses, and ensuring the long-term sustainability of our company. We are demonstrating resilience and creativity as we navigate these unprecedented times. Today, I would like to talk about: one, our response to the COVID-19 crisis, including our transition to a global work-from-home operating model; two, emerging opportunities and risks; three, our performance for Q1 2020 and guidance for the next quarter; and four, actions we have taken to secure our financial position. First, I want to acknowledge the speed and ingenuity with which we transitioned to a work-from-home operating model. Our technology, infrastructure, and operations teams rapidly enabled work-from-home solutions throughout our global delivery network. This was a massive shift from our standard operating model. Today, the vast majority of our employees worldwide are working in the safety of their homes. This is no small achievement. It took hundreds of individuals who programmed computers, developed new IT processes, and mounted a mammoth logistics exercise to transport equipment to their colleagues. I am deeply grateful for the outstanding commitment and hard work of our employees worldwide. Because of this tremendous effort, I am pleased to report that today, we are fulfilling over 95% of our clients’ demand, and our clients are very appreciative of our rapid response. Additionally, this crisis has reaffirmed the extraordinary strength of our partnership with our clients, and I want to thank them for their support. We are working hand-in-hand with our clients to prioritize critical functions and develop innovative solutions. Through this, we have developed an even deeper level of trust and forged stronger bonds. The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced many challenges, but it has also created opportunities to develop solutions to help our clients address issues that have emerged from this crisis. For example, in our healthcare business, our analytics team has developed a solution that predicts emerging COVID hotspots by analyzing data on pre-existing conditions and other health indicators. A large healthcare system and a regional healthcare payer are already using the solution to anticipate resource needs and better manage patient volumes. We are also supporting several of our banking clients with the implementation of the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program, which will grant over $650 billion in loans to US small businesses. The program has led to large volumes of loan applications, and lenders need to scale their operations quickly. We have leveraged our small business banking domain knowledge, operations expertise, and digital tools to set up customized loan processing capabilities for our clients. Our solutions help clients significantly reduce the processing time and the manual effort to deliver timely relief to small businesses. We are cognizant of the issues that our clients face and have built the solutions necessary to support demand surges with accuracy and speed. Innovation borne out of a direct response to COVID-19 will deliver immediate value and help our clients address their challenges and take advantage of new opportunities. While we are helping our clients with new solutions, the uncertainty associated with this pandemic is likely to continue. The global economy is stressed, and certain industries are being impacted much more than others. Governments across the world are actively responding to this crisis, and the efforts of those actions on our business are currently unpredictable. However, this crisis is likely to accentuate the following four trends. Number one, the digital agenda will become more central to our clients’ business strategy as end customers migrate to a more touchless and online experience. Two, migration to the cloud for enterprise-wide data and analytics capabilities will accelerate. Three, cost pressures will create a higher demand for global operation management services, and four, the need for diversification to improve operational resiliency will further increase demand from global partners like EXL. While these trends have been emerging for some time, the current crisis will significantly accelerate their adoption. Because we have been investing in these capabilities for the last several years, we feel confident that we are well positioned to capitalize on these trends in the longer term. Now, I would like to discuss our Q1 ‘20 performance. Despite the impact from COVID-19 in the second half of March, we had a healthy first quarter, following the strong momentum we had built up as we exited 2019. For the first quarter, we generated $246 million in revenue, which represents an annual growth rate of 5.1% on a constant currency basis. Operations management grew 4.2%, and analytics revenue increased by 6.6%. We estimate that around $10 million of revenue in Q1 was not realized due to the disruption caused by the pandemic. Our adjusted EPS for the quarter was $0.81. Despite the loss of revenue and higher expenses due to our COVID response, we were still able to grow our adjusted EPS year-over-year. In view of the current business environment, we are not providing guidance for the full year. We expect our revenue in Q2 to be around 15% lower than Q1 due to the anticipated reduction in client volumes and our fulfillment capacity. We expect an adjusted EPS in the range of $0.20 to $0.40 for the quarter. We realize the need to take immediate actions to deal with the uncertainty of the situation and better align our cost base to our revenue outlook. As part of this effort, today we announced a temporary reduction of compensation for our Senior Management and Non-Executive Directors. These reductions were effective May 1st. We have always chosen to contribute to communities that we are a part of. During these times, we are working with organizations across the world to support healthcare workers who are at the frontline and members of dislocated workforces facing hardship due to sudden lockdowns. We are proud to contribute towards providing food and critical supplies in our 'let’s do it together' spirit. Now, I would like to comment on our plans to return to the office and the role of remote work in our operations going forward. As countries ease restrictions, we expect a staggered return to our facilities. With employee health as our top priority, we will work with employees, clients, local government, and the industry to carefully manage this return while maintaining flexibility, safety, and security. Over the longer term, we will build on the lessons learned during this time. The work-from-home model has significant potential in terms of economic value, access to more diverse talent pools, and higher employee satisfaction and retention. By incorporating remote work as part of our ongoing delivery model, we can ensure greater resilience and flexibility in serving our clients’ needs. Our teams are engaged in thoughtful planning toward this objective. Over the past two decades, EXL has successfully navigated formidable challenges. Through each such experience, we have evolved and emerged stronger. We expect this time to be no different.

Maurizio Nicolelli, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Rohit, and thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning. I will provide insights into our financial performance for the first quarter of 2020, followed by our revised outlook for the business. As Rohit mentioned, we had a solid quarter through mid-March. The first two months were on plan, and we were pleased with the outlook for the first quarter and achievement towards our financial and strategic goals for 2020. Our reported revenue was $246 million, up 3.4% year-over-year on a constant currency basis, and adjusted EPS was $0.81. As you are aware, we announced on our last call and in our 10-K filing, we changed our segment reporting to four reportable segments: insurance, healthcare, analytics, and emerging in order to align with certain operational and structural changes inherent in our business. All revenue growth numbers mentioned hereafter are on a constant currency basis, and my discussion of all year-over-year growth percentages or improvements will be excluding health integrated for 2019 for a true comparison with 2020 performance, unless mentioned otherwise. For the quarter, we generated revenue of $246 million, up 5.1% year-over-year. For the quarter, the impact of COVID-19 on our revenue was approximately $10 million, a headwind of 430 basis points on our growth rate. Revenue from our operations management business, as defined by three reportable segments, excluding analytics, was $153.6 million, up 4.2% year-over-year. This growth was driven by the healthcare and insurance operating segments. Healthcare showed strong improvement with revenue of $27 million, increasing 47.1% over the prior year period. This growth was driven by the ramp-up of new client wins in 2019 and the expansion of existing client relationships in the area of clinical services. Insurance had revenue of $83.7 million, which amounted to a growth rate of 4.1% over the prior year, driven by expansion in existing client relationships. Emerging reported revenue of $42.8 million, which was a year-over-year decline of 11.9% due to lower volumes. Analytics continued to perform well with revenue of $92.4 million, up 6.6% year-over-year. This growth was the result of new client win and the expansion in existing client analytics revenue from insurance clients. Adjusted operating margin for the quarter was 14.8%, up 30 basis points year-over-year, driven by incremental operating leverage. This adjusted operating margin includes a one-time COVID expense headwind of 80 basis points. Excluding the COVID expense headwind, our adjusted operating margin would have been 15.6%. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $44.7 million, up 15.2% year-over-year on a reported basis. Our GAAP income tax rate for the quarter was 20.7%. Excluding the impact of a discrete item related to excess tax benefit on stock-based compensation, our normalized income tax rate was 27%. Our adjusted EPS for the quarter was $0.81, up 14.1% year-over-year on a reported basis. During this pandemic period, liquidity and cash conservation remain our primary focus. We exited the quarter with a very strong balance sheet. We ended March with $367 million in cash and short-term investments and borrowings of $335 million, resulting in a net cash position of $32 million. In April, we repaid $100 million of amounts previously drawn from our credit facility in March to address cash needs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We continue to have $200 million available from our credit facility. This facility has a maturity date of November 2022. As of March 31st, our net leverage ratio, which is net debt divided by the last 12 months of EBITDA, stands at 1.48 times, which is well within covenant limits, which has a maximum of 3 times. Now, moving on to the outlook for the year. The disruption in our business has been felt across all of our business segments and in all delivery locations. Given the uncertainty of this situation, including the unknown duration and severity of the pandemic and overall impact to our services, we are not providing annual guidance at this time. As the economic environment remains unclear and the responses of our clients to their business challenges continue to evolve, we have proactively initiated certain cost-saving measures. While taking these actions, we have retained the flexibility to scale up our support to our clients’ businesses as required. This morning, we announced a temporary salary cut of 50% for our CEO and 30% for other named Executive Officers. We have significantly reduced hiring across the globe, and we are looking to optimize other operational costs, including stringent control on discretionary spending. We have also instituted a program to conserve our cash. We are focusing on client receivable collections and minimizing our discretionary capital and operational spending. We repurchased 176,000 shares totaling $12 million in the first quarter and have currently suspended buying back our shares. Our capital spending plan at this juncture is expected to be approximately $32 million to $38 million, which is significantly less than our previous estimate of $40 million to $45 million. We expect the effective tax rate to be in the range of 25.5% to 26.5%. Based on our current visibility, we expect second-quarter revenue to decline approximately 15% compared to the first quarter of 2020 and adjusted EPS between $0.20 and $0.40. In conclusion, the EXL operating model has shown tremendous resilience during past crises, and we have not only adapted but grown to significantly higher levels of revenue and profitability. We are comfortable with our current financial position, as we have a healthy balance sheet, and we are making significant adjustments to our cost base to better align with our current revenue outlook. Now, Rohit and I would be happy to take your questions.

Operator, Operator

And our first question will come from Maggie Nolan from William Blair. You may begin.

Maggie Nolan, Analyst

Thank you. I wanted to talk about that $10 million headwind that you saw in the first quarter related to COVID-19. Was that primarily related to, you know, difficulties delivering against commitments to your clients as you shifted to work from home? And then, is there any heavier weight towards analytics versus operations management when we consider that $10 million figure?

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure, Maggie. So that $10 million of revenue loss for us was entirely driven by our inability to fulfill the demand from the supply side. We got impacted primarily in the last two weeks of March. And as you know, there were lockdowns imposed in the Philippines and in India, and that resulted in the shortfall of revenue and the impact to our first quarter. The split of that was, you know, roughly a lot more on the operations management side because we were planning for a fair amount of growth and had huge momentum built up in the third and fourth quarters of 2019. Our operations management business was growing close to double digits, and the drop-off in supply really impacted that area. Our analytics business also had an impact, but it was a bit less than the operations management impact.

Maggie Nolan, Analyst

And would you say that was a kind of similar impact to what you’ve been seeing now in April and May? And then, if you could comment as well on kind of incremental expenses over that timeframe that you incurred in relation to the pandemic? And whether or not, you know, some of those roll off and what other levers you may have to manage expenses going forward?

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. So first of all, our analytics business in terms of our ability to fulfill demand is incredibly resilient, and we do not expect there to be any shortfall in our ability to fulfill demand on analytics in the second quarter or going forward, because we can operate on a work-from-home model pretty seamlessly as we did in the office. In terms of the higher expenses incurred, those expenses pertained to higher bandwidth and telecom costs, higher technology costs, and higher hotel expenses that we needed to incur to ensure that we kept our employees safe and secure. Those higher expenses will depend upon how the COVID-19 pandemic plays out and how each geography and country eases some of the restrictions that have been imposed. In terms of the cost structure, we’ve got multiple levers in managing those. We’ve already been very proactive and taken quick action on those levers that are easy and flexible for us to influence, and we will take longer-term actions as needed as the situation develops.

Maggie Nolan, Analyst

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Is there another question? Steve and Maurizio, can you hear me?

Steven Barlow, Vice President of Investor Relations

We can hear you. I just have a message here from the operator that his line went down. So I would ask everyone to hold on, please. He’s trying to establish the line again, and then we’ll get back to the Q&A.

Maurizio Nicolelli, Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, we’re still here.

Operator, Operator

Sorry about the technical difficulty, ladies and gentlemen. And our next question comes from the line of Ashwin Shirvaikar from Citi. You may begin.

Ashwin Shirvaikar, Analyst

Thanks. Hi, Rohit. Hi Maurizio. Hey, well first of all, good to hear your voices. The question I have is could you provide us maybe a closer look at the weeks in April and heading into May? How sort of, you know, your conversations with clients have evolved? Are you now able to, say, for example, ramp the contracts that you won? Are you talking about new deals already? Are clients beginning to refocus on running their businesses? Things like that, if you can provide some underlying color, that would be great.

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure, Ashwin, I’d be happy to address it. So first off, we were heavily impacted in our ability to fulfill demand in the second two weeks of March. We made very rapid progress in bringing up our ability to fulfill demand in April, and we are now at 95% of our ability to fulfill demand. So that’s been very strong. Our expectation is that this will continue to inch upwards closer towards 100%. The conversation with clients has also certainly evolved. In the first week of March, when this all began, the conversation was all about business continuity planning and figuring out how we could perform some of the work from home. We were extremely proactive in reaching out to our clients well before some of the advisories were announced in the local jurisdiction to help our clients prepare for this eventuality. Because of that proactive stance that we took, the impact to our clients’ business and our ability to fulfill demand was actually really, really helped because of that action that we took. There’s now a much greater level of communication and interaction with our clients. The dialogue has shifted from being able to take some of the emergency actions to fulfill immediate demand to where now the demand is much more stable, and we are able to provide services on a much more stable basis. Therefore, the conversation has shifted towards new areas of immediate opportunity that our clients face. For example, we gave you the examples of the SBA PPP program that we saw with some of our banking clients or some of the analytics needs that were there with our healthcare clients, those are immediate opportunities that we are fulfilling right now. The last piece is the growth of our business, which was already planned and some of the deals we had won. Many of those programs were temporarily put on hold by our clients because they could no longer send in subject matter experts for training and for coaching our employees on these new programs. Those conversations have now restarted, and we are seeing engagement with our clients where we are figuring out how we can leverage remote training and remote learning to onboard more employees and more work to be done in a remote location. So actually, we’ve been positively encouraged by the shift in conversation taking place, and there’s a lot more dialogue on ongoing planning for the future.

Ashwin Shirvaikar, Analyst

Got it. And as a follow-up, as I look at the specific Q2 outlook, could you help sort of parse it out by the new segments, both from a revenue and gross margin expectation by segment basis?

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. So first of all, we expect Q2 revenues to be down sequentially 15% from Q1. This drop from Q1 to Q2 is fundamentally broken up into a reduction in temporary demand from our clients and a slippage, because of our inability to fulfill 100% of the demand. Like we’ve said, we expect the fulfillment part of it to be approximately 5% of the total demand, and the rest of it is a temporary reduction in demand. When we look at this across the four segments we’ve got, insurance, healthcare, analytics, and emerging, the revenue demand shortfall is about the same in insurance, healthcare, and analytics. It’s a little bit higher in emerging because we do have clients in the travel industry vertical in the emerging portfolio, and that has been impacted a lot more. From a margin and profitability standpoint, the biggest driver is, of course, the revenue and an adjustment to the cost structure we have, and that’s something which, you know, we’ve provided a range in terms of what that EPS might look like in Q2. We’ll see how that plays out, and we will try to manage and align our cost structure to the new revenue that we expect.

Ashwin Shirvaikar, Analyst

Okay. But on a margin perspective, there isn’t anything just my last question, clarification, there isn’t anything different as we look across segments now that you’re at 95% and from a delivery perspective you’re kind of evened out, you know?

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. The comment that I would make on that, Ashwin, is if you take a look at our Q1 margin, excluding some of the COVID expenses that we had to incur, which are one-time in nature, actually our adjusted operating margin moved up quite nicely, better than planned. So the margin moved up. If you take a look at our analytics business, as we’ve been explaining this to you and to the others, we have been consciously working on improving the margin profile of our analytics business, and that was also a very good improvement that we saw in Q1. So frankly, the underlying trends of the margin structure of our business were moving exactly as per plan and as anticipated. Now we’re going to deal with this new situation that we have and the hand we’ve been dealt.

Ashwin Shirvaikar, Analyst

Got it. Thank you. Stay well.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. And our next question will come from the line of Puneet Jain from JP Morgan. You may begin.

Puneet Jain, Analyst

Hey, thanks for taking my question and good to hear from you guys. My first question, Rohit on demand impact for this year. So you talked about a $10 million impact in Q1, an additional $30 million or so impact in Q2. And I understand some of that could be supply driven. But how should we think about the breakdown of demand impact from potential pricing pressure from increased offshore delays in transition that you talked about and fewer client transactions?

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

So, Puneet, good to hear your voice as well. Let me try and explain this the best way that we can. In Q1, we lost $10 million of revenue, and that was entirely supply driven, so approximately 4% of our revenue fell because of our inability to fulfill the demand that was there. In Q2, we are saying that our revenue will decline by 15% from Q1. We think a 5% impact is there due to an inability to fulfill the demand, and the balance is because of a temporary reduction in demand. The temporary reduction in demand is approximately 10%. The growth that we anticipated in Q2 has been deferred, and we expect some of that growth to start resuming over the next few months as we engage with clients and work out different mechanisms for knowledge transfer. We’ll have to wait and see how the COVID-19 pandemic plays out and then re-engage with our clients. That’s why it’s very difficult for us to provide any color regarding Q3 and Q4. But for Q2, roughly the breakup is 5% due to supply constraints and the balance, 10%, due to temporary reduction in demand.

Puneet Jain, Analyst

Got it, got it. And how should we view EXL’s positioning in the BPO world in the post-COVID environment? Your offshore-based value-add BPO services should become more relevant, I think. I’d like to hear your thoughts on that.

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yes, absolutely. We have a very, very healthy portfolio of businesses. The impact on our portfolio has been much less than what it might have been for others. The insurance portfolio, the healthcare portfolio, and the analytics portfolio have held up extremely well for us. The insurance segment is a very stable segment, and healthcare is an area where there’s going to be a lot more focus in the future. We think the use of data and analytics is really going to increase, so these segments are very strong operating segments for us. The big thing for us with our global delivery network, where we’ve got onshore capability as well as offshore capability across multiple jurisdictions, is going to play out very well because clients will seek more diversification and a lower cost structure. They will find our ability to serve them and be a strategic partner to them increasingly important. EXL is well positioned for these longer-term trends that are likely to take place: greater impact on digital, greater use of data and analytics, more diversification, and a much higher focus on the cost base. All of these trends are very favorable for our business.

Puneet Jain, Analyst

Got it, thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Bryan Bergin from Cowen. You may begin.

Bryan Bergin, Analyst

Hi, good morning. I hope you’re all doing well. Wanted to just start here on client behavior and a bit of a follow-up. I heard the comments on the temporary demand reductions you anticipate. So I guess that infers it’s more so delayed. But I do want to confirm, are you seeing any canceled pipeline opportunities? And then with respect to some of the client concession conversations, can you give us a sense of the duration of some of those agreements?

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure, Bryan. We haven’t seen any cancellations or any revocation of the work that our clients had given to us. What we’ve seen is, in the first few weeks, we were focused on making sure that the current existing business was getting up and on track. We are now focused on helping our clients best manage their medium-term and longer-term needs. Our engagement with them continues to be very active, and we are looking at different ways we can help them and support them. There clearly is a deferment of some of the growth opportunities we had, but these will come back in a much more gradual format, and our clients definitely need our help on. In terms of some of the commercial arrangements we have with our clients, there is an increased cost that we’ve had to incur from enabling work from home. We are working through that with our clients in terms of how that increased cost is to be shared or recovered back with them. Most of our contract renewals were largely in 2019, so most of that is behind us, and we have client contracts in place that are there for the next few years with renewals much later. So there hasn’t been much of a conversation around the contract renewals.

Bryan Bergin, Analyst

Yeah, that’s helpful. And my follow-up is on cost flexibility. So good Q1 margin results here despite the COVID pressure. Can you help us think about the level of further potential cost reductions that you have versus the investments that you’re still making?

Maurizio Nicolelli, Chief Financial Officer

So Bryan, this is Maurizio. We have an enormous amount of flexibility just within our cost structure. We’ve already started the process or initiated the process to review all of our costs and see what levers we can pull, which you’re starting to see come through in our P&L. There are a number of different employee cost-related items that we can leverage now and going into the future. There are non-employee cost items that we can pull to better align ourselves in the current revenue environment, and I’ll give you some examples. In employee costs, we’ve started the process to reduce hiring to bring down our overall go-forward costs. We’ve looked at variable compensation to align that with the current revenue outlook. Non-compensation cost items have been scrutinized as well. We’ve taken a hard look at T&E, marketing, professional fees, really going through and scrubbing our P&L. We’ve also looked at capital spending and as we indicated, we brought down our guidance for capital spending going forward. Having said that, there are certain areas we are still investing in, particularly digital, where we see an opportunity to propel ourselves moving forward. We’re reviewing our investments and prioritizing where we should allocate dollars even in an environment where we’re taking a hard look at costs.

Bryan Bergin, Analyst

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Justin Donati from Wells Fargo. You may begin.

Justin Donati, Analyst

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. The first one I had, can you talk a little bit about what percent of your contracts have minimum volume commitments? And, you know, have clients been asking for reductions there? How quickly can that change?

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

So, Justin, we have about a third of our business under a transaction-based pricing model or an outcome-based pricing model. We don’t provide the percentage of minimum volume commitments within this third. We would tell you we are working with all of our clients on what they can give us as volumes. In certain cases, like in the travel business, that level has been reached. But for other clients, our volumes haven’t really gone down much. So, all of this is included in the reduction of $10 million in Q1 and the 15% drop in the second quarter we’ve guided to.

Justin Donati, Analyst

Got it. And my last question is, are you able to judge productivity levels with work from home?

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Actually, we have been very pleasantly surprised by, A, the speed at which we were able to transition to work from home; B, the productivity levels of our employees working from home; and C, the employee satisfaction and the customer satisfaction we’ve witnessed as a consequence of this work-from-home model. We are finding that, of course, attrition rates have come down dramatically. Productivity levels have increased, and we found particularly for many of our processes that had time constraints. For example, some of the work we do in finance and accounting, we went through a quarter close at the end of March. All of our service level metrics were able to be fulfilled very nicely. We did the financial close and the reporting for our clients’ books on time and, in some cases, actually ahead of time. The response from our employees has been spectacular, and we are very impressed with the way in which the entire organization has dealt with this crisis.

Justin Donati, Analyst

Thanks for the color.

Operator, Operator

And our next question will come from the line of Moshe Katri from Wedbush Securities. You may begin.

Moshe Katri, Analyst

Hey, thanks. I hope you’re well, thanks for taking my question. A couple of follow-ups here. Given the demand pause that you spoke about, what does it mean to utilization rates on the bench? How down could it be in the June quarter? And then I’m assuming you don’t have any plans for, I mean, you do, maybe not for furloughs, at least on a temporary basis? And then I have a follow-up.

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. So first of all, Moshe, the demand pause we are seeing is really in the second quarter. We’ve got people who are getting trained on processes that we think we’ll need to support our clients going forward. We’re investing this time to train our surplus employees on digital technologies, new skill sets, and becoming more proficient in their existing processes. We never used to get the time to invest in this training and retraining, and that’s what we are using this available time for to be ready when that demand comes back.

Maurizio Nicolelli, Chief Financial Officer

And Moshe, good to address your second question about the headcount and furloughs. We want to see how the rest of the year plays out. There’s still a lot of uncertainty. We haven’t made any decisions on any of those types of actions because we really want to see how the rest of the year plays out, and we’re going through the rest of the P&L to drive flexibility within our P&L for all the other cost line items that we’re looking to optimize going forward.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Mayank Tandon from Needham. You may begin.

Kyle Peterson, Analyst

Hey, good morning. This is actually Kyle Peterson on for Mayank. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to touch a little bit, you guys mentioned that some of the demand is kind of being deferred and is expected to resume over the coming months. Just wanted to get some color as to what you think kind of needs to happen for that demand to start coming through. Is it just more clarity on where the world and the economy are going? Is it things starting to reopen, being able to meet people? Is it the economy starting to bounce back? Just want to get your thoughts on what types of events we should look for to have some of that demand move in the right direction?

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. If you look at the types of areas where the demand is being deferred, we think it’s been deferred in terms of some of the new business and customer acquisition efforts of our insurance clients. That’s one area. The second area is we are seeing in the personal lines business, particularly for auto, because there are fewer people on the road, there are fewer claims coming through. Any adjustments to those claims also mean less work needs to be done. Those will come back as the economy opens up and people return to using their cars and vehicles. On the healthcare side, the provider side of the business is currently stretched in responding to COVID-19. On the payer side, activities like pre-certification and others don’t need to be performed right now due to the drop in elective surgeries. As those things normalize, we anticipate that demand will come back since they are areas we typically support in a normal operating environment.

Kyle Peterson, Analyst

Okay, that’s just helpful. And then just a quick follow-up on the trends in revenue in the UK. You know, it’s down quite a bit year-over-year, assuming some of that’s currency. Just wanted to get a little bit of color on what’s going on there, what’s the FX impact versus any planned project ramp-downs and how we should think about that region of the world?

Maurizio Nicolelli, Chief Financial Officer

There hasn’t been a significant FX change there. You’re really just seeing that revenue change within the emerging business. The change is really specific to just a few clients within that segment, nothing significant there.

Kyle Peterson, Analyst

Okay, that’s helpful. Thanks, guys.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vincent Colicchio from Barrington Research. You may begin.

Vincent Colicchio, Analyst

Yes, Rohit, how would you characterize your top 20 clients—sorry, your top 10 clients in terms of—are any of them highly leveraged financially?

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Yes, Vincent. We are very fortunate that we have a very healthy customer portfolio, in fact, a very diversified customer portfolio. The credit standings of our clients are large global companies in insurance, healthcare, and banking and financial services. They are very well-capitalized and positioned. We’ve actually been pleasantly surprised with our collections on our receivables as we’ve gone into the second quarter, and that’s holding up quite well.

Vincent Colicchio, Analyst

And when you talk about the use of the at-home/remote model over the longer term as a potential change, does that include working with more sensitive industries such as healthcare? Or is it broadly based?

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

I think one of the biggest concerns regarding the work-from-home model is information security and privacy issues. We’ll have to deal with that as we go along to figure out ways to manage and control that proactively and deliberately. Healthcare would also have regulatory issues regarding enabling work from home, and we’d be looking into that.

Vincent Colicchio, Analyst

Thank you and be safe, guys.

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Vincent.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. And I’m not showing any further questions at this time.

Rohit Kapoor, Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Great. I just want to thank everybody for joining the call. Please stay safe and healthy, and we look forward to updating you on the company’s performance at the second quarter earnings call. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.