Coforge Limited (COFORGE) Q1 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

Welcome to the call. Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Coforge Limited Q1FI27 Earnings Conference Call. All participants' lines will be in the listen-only mode. We will open the floor for questions, post the management's opening comments. Please note that this conference is being recorded. Joining us today from the COFORGE leadership team are Mrs. Sudhir Singh, CEO, Mr. John Spade, President and Executive Director, Mr. Saurabh Goyal, CFO, and Mr. Himanshu Sarda, AVP, Investor Relations. Before we begin, please note that some of the statements made in today's discussion relating to the future should be construed as forward-looking statements and may involve risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the disclaimer to this effect in the company's Q1FI 2027 earnings press release. I now hand the call to Mrs. Sudhir Singh. Over to you, sir.

Thank you, Imba. And a very good morning and evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. Please allow me to start today's call with a quick reflection and a recap. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the 10th year that the current management team at CoForge has been at the head. Nine years back, what was a $400 million revenue organization when we took over, is poised to close the current year, having grown almost seven times in just 10 years. As you listen to our quarter one commentary and the very robust growth and margin expansion we see ahead of us in this year, we hope you will recognize that the execution intensity and the commitment that has got us here over the last nine years is not just undimmed, but it is actually getting stronger. Over the last nine years, We have delivered a revenue CAGR of 21.9%. Over the same last nine years, we have delivered an EBIT CAGR of 24.6%. And over the same last nine years, we have delivered a PAT CAGR of 24.1%. That is an exceptional record of sustained profitable growth. And yet, that is the past. It is the future which is far brighter, and it is the future which in the short term looks set to mark CoForge out as the firm which truly brought the promise of enterprise AI to life. Our pipeline of large deals in Q2 and beyond has never been stronger than it is today. In Q2 itself, the quarter we are in, one month has elapsed. We believe that we are likely to sign large deals in numbers that will be very close to what we signed in the full year, just three years back. You will recall in quarter one, we had indicated that we were set for a flat quarter. Because we were culling elements of our India government and data center business to ensure that we deliver on our promise to expand reported FY27 EBIT to 15.5% on a consolidated basis and reported FY27 EBIT to around 20.5% for the year. We are pleased to report. That not only have we exceeded the full year EBIT margin guidance target in quarter one itself, but that we have also grown 1.1% CC sequentially. Excluding the impact of the businesses that we curled in quarter one, we have grown almost 5.2% CC in sequential terms in quarter one. Our growth in quarter two and beyond is likely to be very robust, and our margins, having reached this threshold already, will sustain at a minimum and likely expand further. In quarter one, 86% of our business came from AI-led engineering, data, and cloud services. Equally importantly, in Q1, the Encora acquisition was consummated using the proven CoForge integration playbook, which is uniquely our own. We immediately and fully integrated both organizations on day one itself, on the 24th of April itself. As part of our playbook, We parted ways with leaders running the acquired firm again on day one itself, so we had immediate and complete effective control. Today, on the 28th of July in India, all aspects of Incora operations for the last three months are being overseen by co-forged leaders who led the Incora due diligence effort. We are ahead of the cost synergy plans we had shared as part of the acquisition case, and this is reflected in the fact that our consolidated reported EBIT margin in quarter one is already at 16%, while our consolidated EBIT plan for F527 that we had shared with you was 15.5%. At this time, we believe. Let me rephrase that to, at this time, we know. That Encora will create exceptional business value and synergy in line with what Signity, what SLK Global, and what Incessant did. Excluding one-time exceptional costs, EPS for the quarter was Rs.13.30 compared to Rs.13.80 in the previous quarter. This performance is particularly noteworthy given the 25% increase in our equity base following the Ancora acquisition and the incremental interest costs associated with the acquisition financing. As we guided earlier, we remain on track to the EPA secretive NFI 27 following this acquisition. So with that, ladies and gentlemen, and before I get into the detailed commentary, let me talk a little bit about How we are moving enterprises from AI adoption to what we call enterprise autonomy. Let me also reflect on the next wave of AI-driven opportunities for our industry. We believe that the AI-driven disruption will create select yet outsized winners. The new AI-driven world demands that our industry pivot itself from operating on a scale of people to a scale of intelligence. The AI conversation has changed. A year ago, enterprises were asking, how do we deploy AI? Today, they are asking, how do we operationalize it? How do we govern it? How do we scale it? How do we turn it into measurable business outcomes? This shift, which is creating the next wave of opportunity for our industry, is what we at CoForge call the shift towards enterprise autonomy. We believe this next phase of AI will not be won through access to models. Every enterprise will have models. Every enterprise will have cloud or clouds. Every enterprise will have agents. The differentiator will be applied AI. AI grounded in the business context. AI grounded in process. AI grounded in policy and risk. It will come from operationalizing intelligence across the enterprise. It will come in the form of AI that works inside real complex enterprise environments. That is where value is moving, and that is where we are focused. This is why we built CoForge Neuron. Neuron is our AI operationalization platform. Its purpose is simple. To help enterprises move from AI pilots to AI operations, it brings together enterprise knowledge, decisions, workflows, governance, agents, and execution, so AI can operate at enterprise scale. Neuron, ladies and gentlemen, is not another model. It is not another co-pilot. It is not another agent marketplace. It is the operating layer that helps enterprises move from experimentation to production.

We are backing this vision with meaningful investment.

Today, CoForge has more than 11,000 data and AI practitioners, eight AI platforms, 22 AI assets, and over 100 reusable AI agents and accelerators. During fiscal year 26, we invested approximately $58 million in AI innovation. Furthermore, approximately 30% of active agents' engagements already leverage AI within delivery workflows. These are not future ambitions. These are capabilities we are deploying today. Finally, in terms of evaluation of the delivery model, technology alone, we believe, is not enough. The delivery model must evolve as well. And that is why we have combined Neuron with forward deployed engineers, with mod squads, which are hybrid agent human pods, and with reusable AI assets. The traditional model was built around effort. The emerging model is built around outcomes. In this overall context, what makes Coforch different is straightforward. We are not competing on model ownership. We are not trying to be an AI infrastructure company. Our advantage is applying AI inside complex industries where domain knowledge, execution discipline, governance, and measurable outcomes matter most. We know the industries. We understand the workflows, and we understand what it takes to move AI from ambition to a word you hear me use often, execution. We believe the next wave of enterprise value creation will not come from deploying more AI tools. It will come from operationalizing intelligence across the enterprise, embedding AI into decisions, workflows, and operating models. And helping organizations move from AI adoption to the term I started off this conversation with, enterprise autonomy. That is a journey CoForge is enabling through Neuron. Let me move on now to revenue commentary. Consolidated revenue for the quarter stood at US$592.2 million. Indian rupee terms revenue stood at 55,277 million Indian rupees. I want you to recognize that these refigures include only two months of contribution from NCORA, revenue starting the 1st of May and not the 24th of April. Revenue excluding NCORA grew 1.2% sequentially in CC terms, And if, as I had noted earlier, if we take out the impact of the government and the data center businesses that we've culled in the quarter, the rest of our business grew 5.2% CC sequentially in quarter one. Our consolidated revenue on a year-on-year basis in dollar terms has grown 33.3%. Our consolidated revenue, again, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, dollar terms has grown 21.1%. On an organic constant currency basis, banking financial services grew 2.9% sequentially and now contributes 24.7% of consolidated revenues. Insurance grew 4.6% sequentially and contributes 13.6%. Travel, transportation, hospitality grew 1.7% and contributes 21.3% And over all. Healthcare high-tech grew a very rapid 11.6% sequentially and contributes 17.3% to our revenues. Government outside India contributes 6% and others now at 17.1% of revenue, declined 8% following the planned portfolio exits that we had shared with you. From a geographic perspective, organic growth was led by Europe and the Americas, which grew 8.4% and 3.5% sequentially in CC terms. Rest of the world segment contracted 22%, reflecting the impact of the portfolio exits across India government and the data center business. AI-led engineering, data and cloud. Which is the strategic core of the combined organization, together contributed 86% of consolidated revenue during the quarter, ahead of the 80% share that we had indicated when we announced the Incora transaction. AI-led engineering remained our largest revenue contributor at 50%, followed by data services at 21%, and cloud at 15%. The addition of Incora has further broadened our client portfolio. In terms of client mix, Coforge now has one client with revenue greater than $100 million, three clients with revenue between $50 to $100 million, 14 clients with revenue between $20 million and $50 million, and 29 clients with revenues between $10 million and $20 million. Our top five clients contributed 18% of Cuban revenue, and the contribution from our top 10 clients stood at 26.1%. Quarter intake, during the quarter, we signed four large deals. As I noted in my earlier commentary, in quarter two, we expect to sign more deals than we possibly ever have in terms of numbers in our history. Total order intake during the quarter stood at US$691 million. Our next 12-month executable order book expanded to an all-time high of US$2.23 billion compared with US$1.55 billion a year ago. That's an increase of 44.2% year-on-year, and that in turn provides strong visibility in line with my commentary for the year ahead. People, moving to our people metrics, total headcount at the end of quarter one stood at 46,228. Reflecting a net addition of 10,451 employees during the quarter. This includes 9,256 colleagues from Incora who became part of CoForge following the acquisition. On an organic basis, our workforce increased by a net 1,195 employees sequentially. Utilization remained healthy at 82.5%, and we are holding it there because we see significant growth ahead. While in the last 12 months, attrition declined further to 10.4%, remaining amongst the lowest across the industry. With that, ladies and gentlemen, I now hand the call over to my colleague, Mr. John Speight.

Thank you, Sudhir. I will now highlight the quarter's delivery and capability milestones. Across our client base, AI-native operating models are moving from ambition to production. With AI-led conversations converting into large multi-year engagements. For a leading global financial institution, we are building its AI platform and agent ecosystem across the SDLC landscape, with the potential to deliver more than 50% productivity gains across their business units. For a leading Latin American bank, AI-enabled mod squads now span engineering, testing, modernization, and business analysis, targeting a 30% to 50% increase in delivery throughput. For a leading fintech, we modernize its AI-vibe coding developer portal using reverse and forward engineering agents on GitHub Copilot and Claude Opus, contributing to a new modernization engagement. For a leading wealth management firm, an AI-led framework accelerated API transformation by over three months. For a leading wealth and asset management platform, our AI-native advisor experience desktop, powered by over 20 specialized AI agents, is delivering 30% plus advisor productivity gains. For a leading investment services institution, we are supporting an AI-led operating model transformation, with 40% of portfolios transitioned in one year and delivery cycle times reduced by 80%. For a global travel technology leader, the ModSquad model delivered 30% productivity gains and a 22% reduction in manual effort. Also, please note that our cargo platform, Coasis Plus, went live for one of India's largest aviation hubs, extending its footprint to 20 airports globally. For a leading Australian medical indemnity insurer, we progressed a large-scale core platform transformation serving approximately 40,000 healthcare professionals. For a large speciality insurance provider, CodeInsight AI was leveraged as part of a modernization program to migrate to Azure, reducing technical debt by 92%, delivering 99.93% field level accuracy and 65% productivity improvements. Meanwhile, in life sciences, for a leading biopharmaceutical company, an agentic audit platform identified 4 million in saving opportunities at 95% accuracy. In manufacturing, CodeForge's CodeInsight AI platform modernized a global automotive manufacturer's legacy landscape, reducing documentation effort by 70%, modernization cycles by 50%, and operating costs by 35%. For a leading European client, we secured a five-year, 230 million-plus AI-led transformation program using low-code and no-code platforms. AI-powered automation and AI-infused SDLC to reduce their manual effort and improve productivity at scale. These successes were complemented by recognition as both a leader and star performer in the Everest Group Duck Creek Services Peak Matrix 2026 and a leader in the ISG Provider Lens Duck Creek Services Ecosystem Assessment, reaffirming our position as a preferred transformation partner for insurers globally. With that, I will hand over to our CFO, Saurabh Goyal.

Thank you, John. Q1 marks a strong start to FI27, with the combined organization delivering results ahead of the operational and profitability objectives articulated in the beginning of the financial year. I will lead with key highlights of the quarter. Revenue up 49% Y1Y. EBIT 101% reflecting year-on-year margin expansion of 414 BIPs, PPT profit before tax up 92% Y-on-Y, an expansion of 284 BPS year-on-year, and PAT up 110% Y-on-Y, again reflecting 271 BIPs improvement in the margin. Q1 FY27 reported revenue stood at $592.2 million, including $100.7 million that came from Ancora for two months. Consolidated EBIT margin came in at 16%. Organic EBIT margin was 16.7%. Within its first quarter as a part of CoForge, Incora delivered EBITDA margin of 20.3% and EBITDA margin of 19.1%, reflecting a rapid expansion of the integration playbook and realization of SG&A and operational synergies. Coforge's reported GNA for Q4 was 6.7%, whereas Encora was at 10%, and we had mentioned that in our call in December when we announced the acquisition. The combined org is now at 6.6% for Q1 FY27 from a GNA standpoint. This represents a reduction of 40% in Encora GNA. This is further going to improve in Q2 as a result of full quarter impact of actions taken in the current quarter. The hedge loss is incurred during the current quarter amounted to $10 million. Additionally, we have a M2M loss of $14 million in a count of outstanding hedges, which will be realized over next two quarters. From fourth quarter onwards, we anticipate a positive impact of $10 million in our earnings as the hedge losses will be eliminated because of no open book beyond Q3 from our perspective. Exceptional expenses and acquisition-related expenses were recognized to the extent of $6.5 million in the current quarter, and $5.4 million were in Q4. We had guided for acquisition and integrated relation expenses of $15 million at the time of acquisition, and we are going to remain well within that budget. We expect marginal integration cost in Q2 and then nothing from Q3 onwards. From Ancora integration standpoint, the integration of Ancora has progressed significantly ahead of plan. All 45 legal entities were migrated onto S4 HANA effective May 1. Creating a unified operating and reporting environment from day one. Revenue recognition policies, planning systems, and performance management processes have been aligned across the organization. Based on the progress achieved to date, we remain confident of not only delivering, but surpassing the 15.5% consolidated EBIT margin guidance shared in last earnings call for FY27. Moving to cash flows, the combined organization generated a free cash flow of $52.9 million in quarter one, representing a FCF to PAT conversion of 95.3%, compared to negative 56.5% in Q1 same time last year. This significant year-on-year improvement reflects the strength of underlying operating model and disciplined working capital management. We remain confident of meeting the free cash flow to PAT guidance of 100% for FY27. Moving on to balance sheet, as part of Incora transaction, the company recorded approximately $480 million of customer relationship intangibles, which will be amortized over 12 years, resulting in charge of $40 million per year within depreciation and amortization line. The accounting for acquisition has been done on fair value of shares on the date of closing, which was $12.20 per share, as against $18.15 at the time of signing. This has resulted in lower goodwill in the balance sheet by $600 million. On term loan, you would all recall that for Ancora acquisition, we had taken a term loan of $550 million. As of June 30th, the term loan was fully drawn, and it is reflected in the balance sheet. The loan has a three-year tenure and carries post-tax interest cost of 2.99% per annum. The schedule of payments is, including the principal and interest, will be paying almost $59 million in financial year 27, $209 million in financial year 28, And $258 million in FI29. And finally, the last branch of $75 million in Q1 of FI30. With this, I will hand over the call back to Sugir.

Thank you, Saurabh. And summing up and sharing outlook for the rest of the year is what follows. Fiscal year 27 is shaping up to be an exceptional growth year for CoForge. Despite the significant AI-driven flux, not only do we expect to set the benchmark on revenue growth, but we also expect to emerge as one of the highest-margin mid-caps across our industry in this year itself. The exceptional AI-led engineering, data, and cloud services capability core. Which contributes to 86% of our revenues now is what is helping us realize simultaneous and exceptional growth across both the revenue and margin expansion axis. All of this is driven by an execution intensity that is uniquely our own. With eight AI platforms, 22 AI assets, more than 100 reusable AI agents and accelerators. 58 million US dollars invested in AI innovation behind us. We shall continue to center ourselves strongly on using AI to drive enterprise autonomy. As we had shared last time, for Coforge, the demand tailwind in the current environment is structural and pure. We recognize that AI generated code is cheap to build. But we also realize that it is expensive to maintain, to secure, and to govern. We realize that agentic AI will create a massive managed services layer, managing which will create a recurring high-margin revenue streams, but only for firms that can seize it. Every AI advancement accelerates our growth. We are positioned for the near-term legacy modernization search. We are positioned for the medium-term agentic deployment wave, and finally, we are positioned for the long-term expansion of the global technology market. The outlook for fiscal year 27 that we had shared last quarter remains unchanged. We are confident of achieving an EBITDA margin of 20.5 to 21% on a consolidated basis. EBIT margins are expected to be in the range of 16.5% to 17% on a standalone basis and 15.5% or maybe higher on a consolidated basis for the firm. Free cash flow to PAT for this year will be more than 100%. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the end of the prepared remarks. We look forward to your questions, to your comments, and to addressing them. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may click on the raise hand icon from the participant tab on your screen. We will wait for a moment while the Question Q assembles. We take the first question from Solab Govila of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi. Am I audible?

Yes, sir.

Yeah. Thanks for taking my question and congratulations. So my first question is on the fresh order intake number. So just wanted to better understand how much is the fresh order intake number driven by and how much is the core business within that. Plus, you know, last quarter we spoke about... So, just wanted to understand whether that's now part of this fresh order intake or that still continues to be outside.

So, your second question was not clear. Can you report the second question? The first question was, what's the mix between organic and cora-led? What was the second question?

So, last quarter, we had called out that we have certain framework agreements in UK, which was not part of the deal inflow number in the last quarter. So, I'm just trying to understand whether this quarter, those agreements are included or they still continue to be outside of the deal.

So, the $691 million, Sulab, does not include the order intake from the Incora portfolio. That's only the organic piece that has come from what used to be standalone CoForge. That's answer one. As far as the framework agreement and the likely further incremental work that we are likely to get, they are still not included in the order intake. That will continue to come and sit on top of the order intake that we've already announced.

That's great to hear. And just second part of the question was on the, you know, large deal with expectations that you have. I just wanted to understand whether those will support growth rates in 2Q itself or will be more of a 2H phenomenon.

Well, we think Q2 is going to be a robust growth quarter, and everything that we needed for that quarter to come through is already in place. We've already closed some of these large deals in the first month of the quarter. It's almost the first month of the quarter. Four weeks are in. But most of these will really start impacting quarter three onwards. Despite that, quarter two should be very robust, as I said. If you exclude, even in Q1, the impact of the India government culling and the data center walkaway that we've done, even in Q1, we grew 5.2% CC sequentially.

Understood, understood. That is very clear. And then just one question for Saurabh. Saurabh just wanted to check on the networking capital on cash flow this time around. The absolute number as well as the number as a percentage of sales shown some sort of an increase. So just wanted to understand whether that's just because of consolidation of Ancora or there's something more to that.

So, the absolute increase is because of consolidation of Encora, but the number of days have actually come down.

Understood, sir. Thank you for taking my question.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Abhishek Pathak from Mutilal Oswal. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Am I audible? Yes. Yeah, hi, team. Congrats on a good quarter. So I had a couple of questions. Firstly, on the Kofor's Neuron Network or kind of, you know, our FDA sort of mod squads. How are we monetizing this right now? Are they used as accelerators to kind of just win deals or as standalone offerings? They are already generating traction. And in the future? Is there any way to quantify the revenues that are coming from, let's say, platforms versus, you know, not legacy per se, but versus managed services operations that, you know, we may have earlier? That's the first question. The second question was on our TNM versus fixed price sort of revenue mix. You know, the TNM piece seems to have kind of inched up a little bit over the past few quarters. So how should we kind of reconcile this with, you know, the outcome based contracts that seem to be now the flavor, and they will continue to kind of, you know, I'm assuming, you know, dominate the deal conversations ahead. And lastly, kind of a hypothetical question around EBITDA, Sudhir and Saurabh, right? I mean, we are already at 16% EBIT. What happens if we sacrifice, let's say, 100 bips of, you know, margins from here? How much growth does it kind of buy us? Or just to understand, at such a robust sort of margin sort of, you know, level, is it possible to sacrifice a bit of that to kind of, you know, chase even more growth? Or is the expansion in margins more organic? And we continue to expect that going forward as well. Thank you.

Let me take those questions in order, Ravishek. As far as Neuron is concerned, and Neuron in some ways is the operating system. It's not a platform. Neuron is further layered by the eight AI platforms that we have and the 22 AI assets that we talked about, as I referenced. So 30% of the active projects, delivery projects, real projects are being driven through our AI assets or are infused with the AI assets. We can't call out a number which is AI only or AI standalone. The number that we have shared is that 86% of the revenue of the firm in quarter one has come from AI-led engineering, cloud, or data services. And for us, that in some shape or form is an umbrella surrogate for AI-led revenues. As far as TNM versus fixed price and outcome-based contracts are concerned, 6% to 7% of our global revenues on a run rate basis today are coming from outcome-based contracts. That's how I would put it. And as far as the trade-off between EBIT at 16% and growth is concerned, we believe very strongly that solution-led selling It does not warrant price discounting to accelerate growth. As I suspect you heard us say two or three times during our collective commentary across the three of us, we feel very assured that we will set the benchmark for revenue growth for the industry for the third year running. And at the same time, we are equally keen to be the highest. If not one of the highest, the aspiration will be to be the highest margin mid cap as well. We think both of those are possible. We think exceptional growth will still come, despite staying at a 16% odd EBIT level that we've already achieved. Incidentally, I just want you to know that that 16% EBIT is a console EBIT number. Standalone co-forge for the quarter came in at 16.7% EBIT.

Clear, Sudhir. Thank you so much and all the best.

Thank you. Our next question is from Vibhor Singal of Novama Equities. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. And congrats, Kofor's team, on a very solid performance yet again. Sulee, a couple of questions from my side. You mentioned about how enterprises today are, everybody has multiple, basically, agents, multiple LLMs, but what we basically are building them for is the application layer where you can. So, there are a lot of basically information that is kind of flowing at a very rapid phase these days. Enterprises are also talking about building SLMs rather than SLMs, rather than large language models. There also, I think, there is an angle of token cost optimization, which is also coming in. So, keeping that all together in one bucket, how do you see the overall enterprise application adoption in the AI space leading for us? Is it very similar to, let's say, the 2018 scenario when we basically kind of hit that path in which we started moving enterprises onto the cloud platforms and digital adoption? And if that is the case, how do you basically differentiate at this point of time? How does an enterprise differentiate a client differentiate at this point of time between which companies to choose and what are the kind of offerings that they're looking at? I know it's kind of a subjective question, but if you could just help us understand, clear the noise from the information that we need to do at this point of time.

Yeah, I think it's subjective, but I think a very relevant question. Given the rate of change and the speed of change that's going on, I think most enterprises are not tying themselves to a specific model. They are not tying themselves to... Let's say a hyperscaler or a set of clouds, because access to models through clouds that are out there can change. And model providers themselves are now in the field, as we know, and offering their services on their own proprietary cloud. So we're at a stage right now where, from a CoForge perspective, we have come up with service offerings. On a very quick basis, when it comes to token ops to manage token economics, again, a field that seems to see change almost every week. We are at a stage where as CoreForge, we have been working with our partners like Zscaler to come up with service offerings that have already got monetized around partnering on the Guardian AI platform and come up with managed services based constructs around. Mythos related security vulnerability assessment. So the smart enterprises at this point in time, the one key learning that we see all of them having taken is that they're not tying their wagon to any particular star to any particular. LLM model provider or to just one or two cloud providers. We are seeing enterprises increasingly focused on what they're calling enterprise sovereign AI or enterprise open intelligence and increasingly trying to divorce that data processing and moving it in-house with the associated security and governance issues that are going on.

Got it, got it. Just one quick follow-up, and then I have just a couple of questions for Saurabh. Is the aversion to Chinese LLM models still there in the markets, especially in the Western markets, or do you see them opening up to those models also at this point of time, even if at a preliminary stage?

I'm sorry if that question was for you.

No, Sudeen.

Actually, yeah. So this question was to you, Sudeen, I mean, the adoption of...

Sorry, would you mind repeating it before?

So sorry, yeah. So the question was that, I mean, just again, a very bird's eye view if I can get. Is there still an aversion to the Chinese LLM models in the Western enterprises? Or do you see that picking up gradually over the past some time?

We're not working as COFO. At this point in time, we are not working with enterprise clients in North America who are leveraging China-based models actively within their life. And that's just us people.

Siddiqui, I'd add to that as well, just very quickly, I can recur the same comment across UK and Europe. I've yet to have a client that's engaged us on using these Chinese models. Right. Great, John. Thanks for that. That obviously may change with the introduction of the latest LLMs and the issues over tokens, but we've yet to see it. Got it. Got it.

That's really helpful. Just a couple of quick questions for Saurabh. Saurabh, the $230 million deal that we announced last week, is that the part of the deal in this quarter or will that come in Q2?

No, it was a Q2 deal, so it's not going to be good.

Perfect. That's really great to hear. So that means our Q2 deal, as Sudhir also mentioned in the opening remarks, should also be quite strong. Secondly, if I see the presentation, as you also mentioned in your basically opening remarks, that because we closed the transaction in April, and the book value of the Encore acquisition comes at around $1.2 billion. So that has led to a lower goodwill. Is that also led to slightly lower intangibles and slightly lower amortization or we've kind of kept the amortization same as we were looking at before and it's only the goodwill that has probably come down?

It is only the goodwill that has reduced by $600 million. The intangibles, the amortization impact was roughly $4 million per annum and we have kept it at the same level. So, yeah, so the intangible on account of customer relationship is close to 30% of the valuation.

Sure. And just a last bit from my side. Typically, we had seen Q1 had always been a seasonally weak quarter for us in terms of cash flows. Our free cash flow used to be negative in that, but this quarter is a very strong cash flow. So can we expect this trend to continue and the weakness seasonality of Q1 to go away now and probably have a stronger Q1 every time?

Vibor, we had taken this feedback from all the investors and had structurally made that change of improving the free cash flow quarter on quarter. And it was not just quarter one, it was H1, which used to be almost near zero for us for many, many years. It has taken us two to three years to come to a point where we stand today. And we feel very confident that we'll only build on to this in years to come.

Got it, got it, sir. Yeah, great. Thank you so much for taking my questions and wish you all the best.

Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Ravi Menon of Access Capital. Please go ahead.

I thank you. Hi, thanks for the opportunity and congrats on a good quarter. So, G&A people cost has increased a bit faster in revenue. That's surprising, especially given how focused you were on taking out combined G&A costs. Are there any one-time costs here?

The G&A has actually come down as a percentage of revenue. It's just the two companies coming together. The absolute number has gone up. If you look at CoForge standalone G&A last quarter was 6.7. And I had mentioned in my December call when we announced the acquisition that Incora GNA was at 10%. They combined GNA in the current quarter standard at 6.6%. So which means that there is a 40% cost out that has already been done on the Incora GNA. And this will further come down as a percentage of revenue. So the increase is because Incora company got consolidated in the current quarter.

Thanks, sir. I was just looking at the overall G&A people count. That seemed to have gone up slightly. And overall, G&A people cost as well. But yeah, thanks for that. And the interest rate on this three-year loan at 4.6%. This is just 30 bps higher than the three-year US Treasury yield. Is this better than you expected? And are there any specific loan terms here, such as you have to keep a certain amount of cash in escrow or anything like that that restricts? Do we have some cash that's restricted as part of this?

There is no cash that is restricted. The reason why it is only 30 pips higher from the SOFR, which is a three-year SOFR standing today, we signed this deal at a fixed rate of next three years. The price, the interest rates were expected to move in all directions. We didn't want to bet on that. And that's why we signed a three-year fixed-term loan. And that's why it's standard 4.6%. The post-tax impact is actually cost in the P&L is 2.99, because this loan is sitting in India, we get 35% tax benefit on that. So the P&L will see an impact of only 2.99%. But there are no such fancy terms which will restrict any actions that a company might have to take in future. Thanks.

And one last thing. You said that this loan is in India. So does this mean that since you have a natural hedge, you will reduce your forex hedges now?

And I've already said that we're not hedging more. We have a natural hedge and we'll fund it through that. Okay, perfect. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Our next question is from Jyoti Singh from Hightong Securities. Please go ahead. Jyoti, please go ahead with your question. There seems to be no response from this connection. We will move to our next question. That's from Dipesh Mehta of MK Global. Please go ahead.

Hello. Yes. Yeah, so couple of questions. Thanks for the opportunity. First on the, if I look rest of the world segment margin, now it is not showing benefit from some of the divestment which we did. We exited low margin business in India. So if you can help us understand how to reconcile these two things. Second question is about the cloud revenue growth. Now cloud service line, I think that revenue is showing some kind of moderation for last couple of quarters. So can you help us understand how to understand that part? And last thing is about the goodwill. Now, the presentation number, what we reported in rupee terms in goodwill versus the notes to account, what we gave, those two numbers are different in goodwill. Can you help us understand and reconcile this thing? Thank you.

Okay, so I'll take the margin on the rest of the world. So one, there is reduction in the India government business. And there is also reduction in the data center business, which was sitting in rest of the world. So which was coming at a much higher margin. So that's why you see that the overall margin over there has remained flat. And plus the current quarter also includes the consolidation that has happened from Encora coming in. So that's why the overall numbers are looking flattish. But you will see now the rest of the world's margins will start expanding from here on. So that is on the rest of the world. Second question. What was your second question, Dipesh?

The second was cloud revenue, and if it's moderating, Dipej, cloud revenue, cloud engineering. It can fall either way, right? It can either fall on AI-led engineering or on the cloud side. If you look at all three data, cloud and AI-led engineering, that number has gone up significantly. You will see that AI-led engineering has popped up by 5%, and cloud percentage contribution has gone down by about 2.7%, 2.8%. Some of it is a classification issue on where cloud engineering revenue falls.

So just want to understand more about what we put into that line item, because I understand we have very strong overall growth. But from nomenclature perspective, what sits in that? And if let's say it is more like structural, because the way classification happened, that reported line might have some implication of the reporting.

I'm sorry, I didn't get the implication of the reporting piece. What implication are you talking about?

The way we classify revenue, the segment which, let's say, kind of project work which we are getting and seeing significant traction might not be classified into cloud or reported service line item. So whether those kind of definition is having implication about reported service line revenue.

See, this is quarter one of merging in Quora. In Quora has mainly engineering and not cloud revenues, right? And you know that because in Quora, when we presented also, we said that it's largely AI led engineering revenues. Therefore, when the two firms merge, naturally, there would have been a small bump on the engineering piece on a percentage contribution basis. The second piece is what I said earlier. The way we classify revenue is the same way that we look at our own service lines. Cloud services revenue is cloud and AI infrarrelated revenues. And engineering revenue is whatever engineering revenue is. As I said at the outset, again, in response to this question, engineering revenues as a percentage were likely to go up because in Quora head, negligible. Cloud-related revenues, almost all the revenue was engineering, and that's why you're looking at the change that's happening.

And last on Goodwill, if you can help us reconcile the number.

So, Dipesh, the Goodwill, the result sheet has the notes and the notes has the correct Goodwill. And that is what has been recognized in the balance sheet.

And just for the record, cloud for us sequentially has grown 4% QOQ, right? In Quora may have influenced the percentage contribution, but the business continues to do extremely well.

Okay, and just for Saurabh, let's say in your presentation, Goodwill number is 142651, and in BSC, it is 120890. So, one should take 120890 as a number?

One second. So, whatever is there in the BSC filing, yeah, so 120890 is the Goodwill, correct, that's right. Okay.

Thank you. Our next question is from Sandeep Shah of Equus Securities. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the opportunity. Sudhir, some of your large peers are saying that though the AI adoption is increasing, which is leading to deal renewals and a higher demand of AI-led productivity gains, versus that there is no accelerated spend on the discretionary side, which is AI-led, which includes modernization, cloud, cybersecurity, and data engineering. While our commentary shows otherwise that there has been a deal wins which is increasing quarter after quarter. Our trends are slightly different versus PSO. What differentiated delivery model and the go-to-market model which we follow, which is yielding better results versus industry.

So, Deepa, results have been far superior to the industry for the last nine years. I don't think the current quarter of the last one year is an outlier, right? And some of our larger peers, I can't comment on them. But our performance has not been in tandem. It's been materially superior for nine years running. That's almost a decade. You heard us talk at different points in time around our domain depth, the fact that we choose to work in very select verticals. So you contrast data, cloud, and AI-led engineering being 86% of our revenue versus some of the larger peers in the industry. You're looking at a materially different firm from a capability, from an execution intensity, from a domain orientation, and from, I suspect, and I posit, a hunger around the go-to-market cadence than some of our peers. That's why it's not a... And it's not just our commentary that is different, our performance is different. And the difference comes from all the four aspects that I just spoke about.

John, do you want to add to that? Just a few points there. You mentioned on domain. I think, especially in this world, context, which is your functional focus and specialization. And it's not just understanding speciality insurance or wealth and asset management. It's also the institutional knowledge that we have of our customers, which adds to that context. And that has come about because of the long tenure we have with our customers. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing, which was just to reiterate what Sadir said, execution, execution, execution. I've said it many times, but that intensity really does differentiate us.

Yeah, yeah. So, did I also acknowledge the strong execution, not just now, has been happening under your leadership year after year. Just the follow-up in terms of the $158 million deal, which we have announced in the month of April, is it largely ramped up in the first quarter or will also have ramped up in the coming quarter? And the last week $230 million deal, which we have announced, I presume that is also 100% new and will start ramping up immediately rather than ramp up happening later. And when will the wage hikes will happen for us in this year? And Sudhir, in one of the replies to the earlier question, you mentioned that the 5% organic growth Q on QCC terms may even continue in the second quarter. Am I hearing correctly or some error from my side?

So, John, why don't you take the first two questions? I'll take the next two around which I can QOQ.

Certainly. Regarding the initial deal announced, yes, the ramp up has been completed. We did the transition from the incumbent in a record time in less than four months. And we're now north of 300 plus FTEs focused on that account across 15 to 20 teams. And yes, the full recognition of revenue is tracking going forward. On the second deal that we announced, the $230 million plus deal, the ramp up has already initiated on that, and that is expected to add an additional 20 to 30 teams. And I'll also note that that second deal is a complete digital modernization program. Spanning multi-years.

Thank you, John. As far as the next two questions are concerned, as far as wage hikes are concerned, for a very select group, and I mean a highly select group, wage hikes did go into effect in quarter one. But for the broader organization, we anticipate no wage hikes at least till the 1st of January of next year. And that too is uncertain. So we may not have hikes in the current fiscal. And if we do at a broad level, it's not going to be before quarter four. The second question, around 5% organic QOQ. No, we have not provided any hard QOQ revenue guidance. All we've said is, we expect the quarters, starting quarter two, to reflect robust growth going forward.

Thanks. Thanks for the replies. Congratulations and all the best.

Thank you, Sandeep.

Thank you. Our next question is from Prateek Maheshwari of HSBC. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity. Sudhir, I had a question on the, I just wanted to, I was looking for the recap on the strategy on Ancora, basically how you guys are planning to go through the revenue now that you guys now are kind of managing it and it's indicated this is the first quarter. So I was looking at the top five and top 10 client revenues, right? And that hasn't changed despite the integration. So most of the revenue from Ancora is coming below top 10 clients, right? So I wanted to just check on the strategy, whether you guys think there's an opportunity here, big opportunity here to kind of take these clients which got added in the 20 to 50 million bucket to larger buckets, or is it the opportunity from the engineering services which got added, right, which you can take it to your clients and other clients, right? Just wanted to recap that.

Yeah, Pradeek, I think by Q3, which is just a quarter away, we see some very large opportunities in what used to be the Incora client portfolios. Today, one of our top 10 clients of the merged entity is a client that has come in from the Incora portfolio, and that's a relationship that we expect to scale up almost immediately and very rapidly. And we do think if things go well, there is a path. To making it a $50 million plus account over the next 12 to 18 months. There are two other accounts in account list 11 to 20 of Coforch that have come in from the Incora portfolio. Again, accounts, one of which, if I remember right, is an account from the travel portfolio, which we think we can scale up very actively. So from our vantage, the case that we had made when we acquired in Quora had a few access. One, we said the AI-led engineering capability and the combined engineering data cloud core will be. On a composite basis, a great differentiator, there's a tick mark against it. The second thing we had said was the acquisition will give us a new vertical high-tech. You looked at our height and will also nearly double our healthcare business. You looked at the sequential growth that the high-tech and the healthcare business has shown. That again is a tick mark against what we had. And third, of course, something that we've always talked about, taking... Clients and amping them up. As I said, one of those clients is already a top 10 client with significant legs to run up higher. And then there are two 11 to 20, which again will go up higher. That's how we see things. And as I've said, as Saurabh said, and as John will tell you, we feel really, really good. About where things are. We've effectively operationally run in Quora for three months. We don't do an integration and then passively look at it. For three months, we have been in the weeds. We believe that asset has already started making an impact. The point that Saurabh made earlier was the synergies, the cost synergies have been exceptional, 40%. You look at our consolidated EBIT, that's 16%. Thank you. Everything points, and I said this, it's not a belief I think we know now, that this is going to be a defining acquisition, and a very successful one for us.

Right. Thank you so much for the elaborate answer. So, Sudhir, could you also know that you have done the culling in the rest of the world business, right? So, from here on out, do you think all the verticals are going to grow as strongly as probably Europe did this quarter? Just wanted to get a vertical-wise outlook and geo-wise outlook here as well.

Yeah, Pratik, I won't give you an elaborate answer to this, but let me just make this concise and crisp. Every one of the industry verticals, banking, insurance, travel, healthcare, and high-tech, of course, are on steroids. UK public sector under John, John is on steroids. The GEOs, all of them are primed for exceptional growth. We won't have, John, Saurabh, and I wouldn't have given the... That's almost the very buoyant commentary we have if we thought that we had a few engines that were firing. Right now, every engine is firing. In the real world, when you have every engine firing, at times, a few engines fall off. But given the fact that every engine is firing, we feel really good that irrespective of what happens, this is going to be yet another industry-leading growth year for us.

Thank you so much, Sudhir.

Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Our next question is from Alidi Patil from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. I have two questions. First one, our India government business run rate was $50 million last year. And out of that, we had a $15 million ram down in Q1. So, rest of the $35 million ram down, is it expected uniformly over the next three quarters?

Aditya, it's part of the base now. So, there's no incremental impact that will come from a growth standpoint. It's part of the base. The reduction is already here.

Okay. And Sudhir mentioned on our share of outcome-based contracts is around 6-7% of revenue. So, can you share examples of how pricing is done in these contracts?

I'm sorry, examples of what? Can you repeat that, please?

How pricing is done in outcome-based contracts?

Yeah, so there's a clutch of models that we use. At an extreme, there are models where we take over a legacy modernization on a... On a significant risk basis, where only part of the revenue that should come to us for the effort is assigned to us, but deep profits, post-program success, legacy mod using our four jets, and our neuron operating system are supernormal. The second model that we use is a subscription model that we use for the Copoge mod squads, which are our hybrid agent human pods. These are monthly subscription-based models, and we allow clients to flex across FTE, choosing the FTEs, choosing the agents from the 100 plus, the 130 odd agents that we have. And the third one that we look at, again, are different flavors of outcome-based, but some of them are tied to technology options and others are tied to business also options.

Okay, got it. Thank you for answering my questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question is from Divesh Mehta of Invesco India. Please go ahead.

So, thanks for taking my question. I think within the order intake, you did call out that this does not include the acquired entity's order intake. I just wanted to get a hang of what would be the broad order intake trend within the acquired entity, just trying to understand how that is ramping up. That's my first question.

Oh, Divesh, I won't have that number, but as Saurav had pointed out, since we've taken only two months of revenue off in Quora starting the 1st of May, the revenue was, if I remember right, $100.2 million. At this point in time, all I can tell you is the order intake was robust. And as I'd indicated with some of the large accounts that they have, the pipeline also is robust. So next time when we give you the, when we share with all of you the full quarter performance, we'll make it a point to make sure that we are ready with an answer around the Incora portfolio order intake in case we can still divvy it up.

Okay, fair. This is helpful. And just to add here, so how long in your reading will it take for the acquired entity broadly to reach the order intake and intensity of what COFORGE has?

Oh, we promised this. We said, no, no, not four quarters, two quarters. That's not how we operate. We will, we've said this, it'll be the performance. On margins, anyway, the organizations are indistinguishable given the very aggressive cost out we've done, sort of talked about a 40% GNA cost culling. On margins, the organizations are now indistinguishable. Quarter three onwards, revenue growth, they will be indistinguishable, recognizing that the co-forged threshold that we've already established is that at a minimum, it will be very robust growth. So it's not long term, it's not medium term, it's the immediate, it's the here and now.

Okay, fair, fair. This is helpful. And on the demand side, you have been calling out that you are seeing, at least for your own, at least for Coforge, you are seeing a good demand backdrop. So within the industry, has anything changed beyond our own execution? Or how would you look at deflation trends that are the same and descriptionally reviving? How would you put it for the industry in that sense?

I think the industry has deflationary trends linked to efficiency, but the industry also has significant tailwinds around legacy modernization, around creating AI-ready data foundations, around creating cloud infrastructure ready for the AI that is scalable, that will allow for compute at scale, that will allow for model hosting, that will allow for envelopes. The industry also has significant tailwinds on account of everything that's happening on the security side. Of course, and that's the here and now. This is not something that will happen. So yes, efficiency-related deflation is a reality, but the opportunities around legacy mod. Data AI ready foundations, cloud scalability, MLOps, model hosting, security are real here now. In the medium term, there are more, right? We've talked about it. Custom agentic solutions, creating agent harnesses, managing that agentic ecosystem that is going to get formed, helping with model development and deployment. And it's really, and John talked about it when he said it's execution, execution, execution. If we put our heads down and we focus on the opportunities, the opportunities are many, but they need a very hard pivot. And once done, one can realize that.

So would you put it this way that right now the inflation is higher, but probably by next year, the opportunities will be relatively higher to the deflation for the industry?

We possibly are the best people to answer that because for us, deflation is not higher. For us, the tailwinds are very strong. For us, the growth right now is very strong. As I said, had we not culled the business that we said we are culling, we would have grown 5.2% CC quarter to quarter. So, there is a deflationary element, but I don't think we need to wait for the future for the winds to turn around. The winds are real and there are tailwinds as well. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Sudhir.

Thank you.

Thank you. That was the last question for today. I now hand the call back to Mrs. Sudhir Singh for closing comments.

Thank you, Imba, and thank you, ladies. Gentlemen, we find these calls extremely instructive. We find always your questions very insightful, and we look forward very, very keenly to have these interactions. We enjoy them. We cherish them. We look forward to them. Thank you for making time for us. We hope to see you again next quarter. Thank you. Good day.

Thank you, members of the management. On behalf of CoForge Limited, that concludes today's call. Thank you for joining us, and you may now click on the leave icon to exit the meeting. Thank you for your participation. Goodbye.