WNS at Baird Conference: Strategic Growth Amid Challenges

On Tuesday, 03 June 2025, WNS Holdings Ltd (NYSE:WNS) presented at the Baird Global Consumer, Technology & Services Conference 2025, outlining its strategic vision amidst both opportunities and challenges. The company, a leader in business process management (BPM), highlighted its focus on leveraging digital solutions and data analytics to enhance client services. Despite some client-specific setbacks, WNS forecasts a robust return to growth.

Key Takeaways

• WNS anticipates a 9% revenue growth this fiscal year, overcoming a 2% "hangover" from past client challenges.
• The BPM market is expanding, driven by technology like GenAI, which WNS views as a catalyst for growth.
• WNS maintains a strong financial position with a net cash balance and a balanced capital allocation strategy.
• The company is pursuing large deals with a robust pipeline valued at over $600 million in annual contract value.

Financial Results

• Annual revenue run rate stands at approximately $1.3 billion.
• WNS achieved an 11% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in constant currency revenue over five years.
• Adjusted earnings have grown 14% annually over the same period.
• Fiscal 2026 guidance indicates a return to healthy growth in both revenue and earnings, with an 11% growth in normalized earnings expected.

Operational Updates

• WNS serves over 700 clients with 60,000 employees across 13 countries.
• About 25% of its business operates on non-FTE models like outcome-based and subscription services.
• The acquisition of Kippi enhances WNS’s data modernization capabilities, particularly on the Snowflake platform.
• Recent challenges included shifts in client strategies, impacting revenue with a 2% growth "hangover."

Future Outlook

• WNS expects to secure large deals with a minimum of $10 million in annual contract value.
• A 2% growth boost is anticipated in fiscal 2027 as the company overcomes past client-specific issues.
• Potential for margin expansion of 20 to 30 basis points annually through growth in non-FTE services and technology solutions.

Q&A Highlights

• WNS anticipates returning to high single-digit or low double-digit growth by fiscal Q2.
• The company sees consistent BPO growth regardless of macroeconomic conditions.
• Insurance sector growth is driven by the need for efficiency amid rising rates.
• GenAI is viewed as a positive disruptor, with potential for a 4% to 5% productivity improvement.

WNS Holdings Ltd’s strategic focus and robust financial health position it well for future growth. For more details, refer to the full conference call transcript below.

Full transcript - Baird Global Consumer, Technology & Services Conference 2025:

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: Well, good afternoon, everyone. My name is Dave Koning. I’m a senior research analyst at Baird covering payments and services. Thrilled to introduce WNS. We have Dave Mackie here.

He just said he’s been at WNS for fourteen years. I’ve been at Baird for twenty three, so there’s a lot of years involved. And WNS, a leader in business process management, recently reaccelerated really nicely getting back on track to normalize growth. And why don’t I turn it over to Dave to review a few slides and we’ll do a Q and A. I was going to let

Dave Mackie, WNS: you keep going and give the presentation for me because you’ve probably seen it as much as I have. Just real quick, go through a company overview for you. WNS, as Dave said, is a leader in business transformation and business services. We combine deep domain expertise with digital solutions, data management capabilities with a goal of making our clients’ core mission critical business processes more efficient and insightful, improve their customer service, drive new revenue streams and help improve their competitive positioning. Today, WNS has the size, reach and capability to service some of the world’s largest corporations.

We have over 700 clients, 60,000 global employees in 13 countries and an annual revenue run rate of about 1,300,000,000.0. In terms of what we do, WNS is focused on delivering impacts and outcomes for our clients by solving complex business problems. At the center of everything we do is more than twenty five years of deep domain expertise, which remains WNS’ key competitive differentiator. Our understanding of industry specific operations, processes and workflows in the verticals we serve is the key to unlocking the benefits of data and technology. We remain the only pure play provider with an organizational structure aligned by vertical or by industry as opposed to peers that are aligned horizontally or by service offering.

WNS has built a comprehensive set of data and analytics capabilities, which allow us to drive actionable insights and effectively leverage the power of new technologies like AI, GenAI and AgenTik AI. The company has invested heavily over the past five years to create domain centric productized offerings, which allow us to combine our WNS proprietary digital assets with the services delivered by our global talented teams. As a result, today, WNS is able to design, build and run our clients’ core business processes, creating solutions which combine domain, digital and data and operate at the intersection of human intelligence and artificial intelligence. In terms of the WNS investment thesis, there are three key pillars to the story. First, we service a market which is large and growing, underpenetrated and rapidly evolving.

According to the industry analysts, the global business process management space is about $300,000,000,000 in revenue and is expected to grow at a compound growth rate of about 5% over the next five years. These same analysts believe that our industry is currently only 25% to 30% penetrated with the majority of the balance of the work performed in house by customers themselves. With technology advances, our addressable market is expanding and industry adoption is accelerating as clients look for partners to help leverage these tools and platforms across their business processes. This is why we believe that similar to past technology cycles, new tools like GenAI and AgenTik.ai present more opportunity than threat to our business. Our industry also has relatively low macro correlation.

Our services are in demand regardless of the environment as clients need to leverage technology, transform their business models and save money in order to compete. As a result, we have very limited exposure to discretionary spending. Second, WNS is well positioned to meet the evolving requirements of our customers. As I mentioned earlier, we have a unique set of solutions combining differentiated deep domain with digital and AI and data and analytics capabilities. We’ve invested heavily in this area, including a recent acquisition of a company called Kippi, a leading provider of data modernization and data management services focused on the Snowflake platform.

WNS has also created strategic partnerships with industry leading technology firms in infrastructure, foundational models, automation and workflow software, data platforms and AI applications. Today, we deliver approximately one fourth of our business in non Feet models, including outcome, transaction, fixed fee and subscription based models. We believe this is industry leading and aligned with where the marketplace is heading. Third, the company has a proven track record of delivering double digit revenue growth, industry leading margins and earnings that grow faster than revenue. We’ve demonstrated the ability to manage through macro changes and macro challenges, including the financial crisis, Brexit and COVID, and through technology cycles, including IoT, AI and ML and RPA.

We have high quality recurring business, visible revenue portfolio backed by long term contracts, mission critical services and high switching costs. We also have a strong net cash balance sheet, excellent free cash conversion and a balanced disciplined approach to capital allocation across tuck in M and A, share repurchases and CapEx. Today, our structure approach and investments are resonating well with both existing clients and new prospects. Over the past five years, we’ve grown constant currency revenue growth at an 11% compound annual growth rate and delivered industry leading adjusted operating margins of 20%. During the same period, we’ve grown our adjusted earnings at 14% compounded.

After some client specific challenges last year in fiscal ’twenty five, our fiscal ’twenty six guidance returns demonstrates a return to healthy growth in both revenue and earnings. Entering the fiscal year, we have 90% visibility to 9% revenue growth at the midpoint of guidance and 11% growth in normalized earnings. And with that, I’ll move it to the Q and A portion.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: All right. Yes, thank you for that. And maybe we can kick off by just talking a little bit about the challenges. You kind of mentioned the one offs or I think three or four of them kind of over the last eighteen months. But now the last two quarters, you’ve gotten back to normalized sequential growth, which would mean by about the December back on track.

I mean is that correct at the high single, like 10%

Dave Mackie, WNS: growth? Yes. Yes, that’s correct. And certainly, we look at this business, given the annuity nature and the recurring nature of the business, as a quarter to quarter business. And obviously, things can happen when you look more at a year over year basis.

And when you see our Q1 results, you will see an impact on a year over year basis from one of these large headwinds that we’ve spoken about. But that will be completely anniversaried at the end of the fiscal first quarter. And as a result, what you should see is in our fiscal second quarter, a more true view on the growth rate and back to that high single, low double digit growth on a year over year basis in fiscal Q2. Which is the September?

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: Correct. Yes. And so the one offs, I mean, maybe describe because they were it just happened that there were a few that were all kind of just really almost ironic that they all happened at the same time, but maybe just review why they’re not normal. Yeah.

Dave Mackie, WNS: Look, I mean, we had three specific issues that we had hit us in the span of about eighteen months. There was nothing similar either in terms of the services impacted, the verticals impacted, or more importantly, the underlying reasons for the client specific challenges. In the health care space, we had a large client who moved a portfolio of work to an asset that they had taken a 25% equity stake in. In the travel vertical, we had a client who pushed increasing amounts of work to automated chat features, which reduced our volumes. And then in the retail space, we had a large Internet based client who continued to do the same quantum of work with us but change the delivery from an on-site centric U.

S. Model to an offshore centric India model, which resulted in compression on the revenue. So three very, very different issues across three verticals and three services. But the good news is, as you mentioned earlier, once we get past fiscal Q1 here, these should largely be behind us. And the good underlying growth rate that we’ve even put up in the last couple of years will start to show through.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: Yes. That’s great to hear. In terms of bigger deals, Juan, one nice thing about the way you’ve been guiding now the last couple of quarters at least for this year certainly is no big deals from the pipeline into revenue expectations, meaning if you do win something, it’s all upside. I guess, so how is that big deal pipeline? I mean, there a chance you could sign more stuff?

Dave Mackie, WNS: Yes, certainly. The expectation is we’ll continue to sign large deals. The challenge obviously is predicting exactly when we’ll be able to bring those deals over the goal line. And fall on the sword and it’s a mistake we made a year ago by including large deal contributions in the year and when those deals slipped a quarter or two created a little bit of a vacuum in the numbers. So as rightly said, the company’s approach now is given the complexity of these deals, given the disruptive nature of these deals, given the impacts on the client side, it’s very difficult to predict when they’re going to close and how they’re going to ramp.

So for us to include them would probably present an unnecessary risk to the guidance. And as a result, we don’t include it anymore until we’ve formally signed a contract. That being said, we have a robust pipeline of these large deals that continues to build at a healthy clip. We’re tracking more than 20 large deals, which for us means a minimum of $10,000,000 of annual contract value. And that pipeline now is over $600,000,000 in annual contract value in aggregate.

So these deals are large. They’re impactful. We expect to sign our fair share of these deals and believe we’re well positioned in a lot of these. But the timing is something that we’ll just have to wait and see, and we’ll certainly be sharing with The Street as and when we sign them.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: And if we think that same 7% to 11% or so 9%, the midpoint of this year’s guidance, if we say, okay, that’s pretty normal, would we say fiscal twenty twenty seven, so next year, likely will be around there even if you don’t get big deal signings so that if you do get some big deal signings, that could actually push upside to next year, too?

Dave Mackie, WNS: Yes. Look, I think there’s upside relative to what fiscal ’twenty seven will look like versus fiscal ’twenty six from two perspectives, right? One, as you rightly said, if we sign more of these large deals as we move through fiscal ’twenty six, It improves the visibility and it improves the revenue contribution from these deals, not so much this fiscal year but more into next year. I think the other thing is, and we didn’t really touch on it, but embedded in that 9% growth at the midpoint of guidance for this year is a 2% hangover from those three customer specific challenges that we have. So as we anniversary that additional 2%, that should give us 2% better growth.

So on an apples to apples basis, we’re really looking at 11% this year. But optically, we understand that those headwinds are still here, at least in terms of the first quarter impact for fiscal twenty Yes.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: Okay. And when we look at macro right now, I mean, is that pretty steady? I mean one interesting thing, I guess, about the industry is that when we look at the kind of BPO, IT and call center, we kind of look at all three and BPO consistently has been growing like nicely faster. Is the macro just better for you guys right now?

Dave Mackie, WNS: Yes. Look, I think if you look at the BPO growth rates, they’re consistent regardless of the macro. When the macro is healthy, we don’t spike up to 20%, thirty % growth. When the macro is bad, we don’t go to zero. And I think that’s a function of the fact that the driver for our industry is whether or not customers need technology and automation and cost reduction within their business models.

And what we’ve seen over the last ten years is that independent of macro, these are things that are important to customers. They need to do these things in order to be competitive. And that the only thing that changes is on the margin, if the macro is weak, then the cost reduction theme tends to improve. But in general, the BPO businesses do not have significant amounts of project based revenue, which kind of falls into that bucket of discretionary spend, which means relative to IT services or relative to customer service from a volume perspective, our exposure to macro is going to be far less. And as a result, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that we have a countercyclical business, but we certainly have a business that has extremely low macro correlation.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: Yes. And when we think about the government or regulatory backdrop, does that any impact from tariffs or anything the administration is doing with offshoring, etcetera, that changes much?

Dave Mackie, WNS: No. I’ve been in the offshore services business for thirty years now. I can recall Lou Dobbs on CNN every night talking about the outsourcing of America. So these themes tend to rise and they tend to fall. And certainly, when you look at tariffs, if I were a manufacturing organization, I would have concerns about short term and long term impacts.

But relative to the globalization of services, I think both from These are not things that I think are in scope today. Obviously, it’s something we can always watch and look at. But the reality is that to service the kinds of requirements that our customers are looking for, it would be extremely difficult to do without global talent. Yes.

And

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: maybe moving on to Gen AI, I would say it’s still viewed as a negative for both the BPM and the CX industries, and it’s come down to being viewed even as probably neutral for the IT service industry. For a while, it’s viewed as a tailwind. And your multiple has not recovered really. I mean in three years since this reared its ugly head, I guess, but it actually might not be an ugly head, it

Dave Mackie, WNS: might be positive. No. We honestly view technology advancements and changes as a net positive for our business because at the end of the day, what they do is they create disruption in the client environment. And what we bank on and what we’ve historically seen is that clients’ ability to manage that disruption themselves is extremely low. So in order for a customer to take advantage of six years ago, RPA tools, automation tools, what they found is that while they tried to implement and integrate them themselves, it didn’t work and they needed a services partner to change the process, to implement and integrate the tools, to reassess the skill sets required to deliver it and to get the outcomes and the results that they were looking for.

As those tools and technologies get more complex and more difficult, I think the need for a services partner only increases. And certainly, GenAI and AgenTeq AI are tools and technologies that have massive upside for customers, but also a lot of work that needs to go into them to properly leverage them. If your data isn’t in a good state, if your infrastructure isn’t in a good state, if your processes aren’t set up to leverage what these tools are capable of doing and your people aren’t in place to be able to work with these tools, then it’s not going to matter what you try. So we’re very, very convinced that the more disruptive the technology, the more clients are going to need services partners with expertise and particularly domain expertise to be able to deploy these tools for customers, right? If you don’t understand operations, if you don’t understand processes, if you don’t understand workflows, getting the benefits out of a Gen AI tool is not going to help.

Cleaning your data is not going to help. So we think we’re in a great position to be able to leverage these tools. And while it may create some downward pressure on same store sales, right? Productivity improvements that are required that can be delivered, some of that we will give back to customers. What it does in terms of expanding the addressable market and what it does in terms of accelerating adoption will far outstrip that.

And obviously, that’s got to play itself out. But you’re right, when you look at the Wall Street thesis when Chegg blew up the May in ’twenty three, there were immediately buckets of AI winners and losers that were presented. And the BPO names and the CX names all fell into the AI loser bucket based largely on the perception of the labor component of the business.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: Yes. Well, to me, what’s a little surprising is and this will play out over a long period of time, but the some of the lower cost labor markets are India, Philippines. The lower the cost, the harder it is to have big savings on the labor cost. And, you know, I I kind of worry more like, well, what about the $400 consultants? Like, you can find a way to replace some of them,

Dave Mackie, WNS: like, that’s Look, I mean, I I think these tools and technologies are gonna find their way into everything, right? There there’s no There’s no limit to the impact, right? It’s just a question of how deep into each of the functions will these tools affect and will they be productivity tools for properly trained individuals to use versus, you know, tools that replace individuals? And I think that’s what we’re seeing across the spectrum today is that tools like GenAI and AgenTik AI are more about, you know, employee assist versus employee replace,

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: but

Dave Mackie, WNS: it will result in changing skill sets for those people. They’re gonna need to know how to use these tools in order to deliver the kinds of results and the kinds of outcomes that people are looking at. But, at the end of the day, we actually embrace the usage of these tools, and we feel that they’re going to be long term drivers for adoption of services partners.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: And if you’d have to say five, ten years from now, would you say what would you say in revenue headwind just from some of the replacement revenue and then offset by like the revenue tailwind and the margin tailwind potential? Like what do you think could happen?

Dave Mackie, WNS: Look, I think if you look at what’s historically happened, what we’ve seen is that the productivity commitments that we build into contracts will nudge its way up, right? We used to talk about a 1% to 2% contractual committed productivity. With AI and ML and RPA, that number went up to 2% to 3% and then 3% to 4%. To sit here and tell you that two, three years from now, we won’t be talking about 4% to 5% committed productivity because a Gen AI tool or an Agentic AI tool is more impactful than an RPA tool would be disingenuous. But I think the reality is the more impactful these tools are on the existing book of business and the better the outcomes that they’re able to deliver for customers beyond cost.

Right? It’s just about saving money. It’s about reducing cycle times and helping use data to create actionable insights and reducing error rates and detecting fraud and improving customer satisfaction. These are what our customers are looking for and cost reduction. Right?

And and I think the more impactful these things are on business outcomes, the more it’s going to create a necessity for the people who haven’t outsourced and haven’t partnered to have to find a partner in order to compete. And in fact, when you look at the Gen AI use cases and the implementations that we’ve done to date, And we’ve got roughly 5% of our revenue today that is Gen AI impacted. Mhmm. When you look at the use cases and you look at what customers are asking for, are there, you know, agent assist productivity requests? Absolutely.

But over half of these requests today are about doing things differently. It’s about things that can actually generate revenue for customers or change how they go to market. And that’s what’s exciting is that while Wall Street views this solely as a black cloud and a deflationary cost reduction type of an initiative, our customers aren’t looking at it that way. They’re looking at these tools as a way to create competitive advantage and that’s not through cost.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. My last Gen AI question, super important one. So you bought a company called Kippy AI?

Yes. Was that named after the Bruce Willis film where he goes yippee ki Have anything to

Dave Mackie, WNS: I don’t think so. I think if you ask them, they probably would would not they may not even recognize it.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: They might not. I put it in our note and I nobody ever said it it was or wasn’t.

Dave Mackie, WNS: No. No. We’re actually really happy with that asset that we bought and we think it fills a really important niche in our suite of services. The company are experts in data modernization and data democratization, which is a fancy way of saying they’re really good at cleaning data, making data usable by customers, and putting that stuff into a centralized place where it can be used across the enterprise. And they are one of the leading partners for Snowflake here in The US.

As a matter of fact, they’ve got the second largest number of Snowflake certified resources in the country. So really good at kind of what I view as the front end to this whole AI, Gen AI, right? Because without good data and clean data in a centralized place to be able to properly leverage it, it’s garbage in garbage out.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: And it gives you a chance to see the front end of what’s happening.

Dave Mackie, WNS: It’s a great way to get our foot in the door and show customers our data capabilities to start with and to be able to sell the implementation integration services and then sell the process management services on the back end of that. So yes, absolutely, we can use data management as a spearhead to selling the recurring three and five year contracts and the stickier part of our business.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: I was just going to ask about some contract dynamics. Duration is still three to five years. Pricing is still is it competitive right now? Like are there is it or is it still the same 3% to 4% like contractual like discounts? Yes.

Dave Mackie, WNS: Look, I think in general, you’re still looking at contracts that are minimum three years and closer on average to five years in duration. For a customer to go through something that’s this disruptive and this transformational, it doesn’t make sense to do a one year. And as part of that transition of work, what we’re doing is we’re helping them manage that transition and manage that assistance, which means the economic value comes from a longer term contract as opposed to a shorter term contract. That being said, we haven’t seen a bump up yet in terms of the productivity commitments that we have to give back contractually. And the front end of these contracts, the economic benefit to client is still saving 30%, forty % day one.

So as I said earlier, even in a weak macro, the economic benefits of this type of a service and this type of a solution is still going to resonate.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: And if we go through verticals, insurance seems like a really good place to be. Like I was just looking at my cabin, the insurance rate went 40%. I was like, can we just take my sauna off of it and not charge me 40% off? If it goes up in flames, it does.

Dave Mackie, WNS: Yeah.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: And they’re like, no, we just can’t do that. Is is this why your insurance is not my not in my cabin, but is the reason it’s going up so much for you growing fast because the rates are going up everywhere and they’re having to try to figure out how can we get this more efficient?

Dave Mackie, WNS: Yes. Look, I think the need to manage multiple parts of the insurance industry is only accelerating, right? And these tend to be very large, very old, very slow organizations to move. So adoption is not going to mirror what you’ve seen in global banking for the last ten years. But when you look at the ability to meaningfully impact what they do and how they do it, it’s absolutely 100% there.

And whether that’s policy administration, whether that’s actuarial services, whether that’s claims management, these are all areas that are ripe for transformation, automation, and helping them leverage the data and information in their business to run it better. Right? If you can centralize your data, then theoretically, you should do a much better job of detecting fraud. You should do a much better job of feeding your analytics team, I mean, your actuarial team to price product. So I I think these things all start to go hand in hand and having a partner who can help you leverage technology to do these things is it’s increasingly important to insurers.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: And travel, that’s been weaker. Is that hitting easier comps coming up? Or like the backdrop of travel has kind of slowed a little. It’s kind of a little more stable now. But like what are you guys seeing?

Dave Mackie, WNS: Look, I think at the end of the day, we continue to add new travel clients. I think our services and solutions are meaningful across the airline space, across the online travel space, across the hotel space, the hospitality world. But the issue that we’ve had really isn’t about slowdowns in the industry. The issue we have really had has been largely restricted to the online travel space and largely confined to the fact that they’ve moved large quantums of work, forced customers to move from agent assisted services and solutions to chatbots and chat functions. And that was entirely for them about cost reduction.

It wasn’t about volume reductions. So the reality is I think what you’ve seen in terms of the impacts to our business in travel haven’t been about macro, haven’t been about demand for what we do. It’s been about volume reductions within the online travel space and our installed base. That being said, I think we’ve kind of now got to the bottom of that. Online travel for us is down to 3% of revenue.

Our largest customer in that space is now down to 05% of revenue. So the exposure is limited. The downside risk is limited. We really like the space because at the end of the day, travel is our core. It’s our heritage.

It’s kind of our lifeblood. And we believe that we are one, if not the best, providers in travel services. And lots of disruption coming and lots of things that we know we can do, for example, for airlines that help make the travel experience much better.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: For sure. And I guess finally, just as I look at margins, they were 20% plus for many years. Fiscal twenty five, down nineteen point five due to some of the one off factors. Should that quickly come back to 20% plus?

Dave Mackie, WNS: Yes. I mean, look, we’re obviously investing at a healthy clip and we have been. And certainly in digital and data and AI, we’ve accelerated some of those investments. As you rightly said, the big issue in fiscal twenty twenty five was more about expense coverage in the first half of the year. That number was artificially low because we had an 18% SG and A rate in the first half of the year as opposed to that 16% to 17% that we traditionally run.

That being said, we think we’re in a nice position now, whereas we continue to accelerate that growth, we have the opportunity to expand these margins 20 to 30 basis points per year. So that’s kind of the shorter term view. The longer term view is we believe the move towards non FTE services and the move towards technology enabled solutions will allow us to drive higher margins long term.

Dave Koning, Senior Research Analyst, Baird: Yes. Sounds good. Well, that’s about all the time we have. Please join me in thanking WNS. Thank you.

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