WNS at TD Cowen’s Conference: Strategic Growth Amid Challenges

On Wednesday, 28 May 2025, WNS Holdings (NYSE:WNS) participated in TD Cowen’s 53rd Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference 2025. The company outlined its strategic initiatives amidst both opportunities and challenges. While WNS emphasized its robust growth pipeline and innovative solutions, it also acknowledged client-specific issues that have affected performance.

Key Takeaways

• WNS projects a 7% organic growth for FY’26, adjusting to 9% excluding client-specific headwinds.
• The company is leveraging AI and GenAI to enhance client solutions and expand its market reach.
• WNS has 90% revenue visibility based on current client contracts.
• The non-FTE segment accounts for over 25% of the company’s revenue.
• WNS is actively pursuing large deals as a separate sales channel.

Financial Results

• Revenue Growth:

- Sequential growth: 3% in both Q3 and Q4.

- FY’26 Guidance: 7% organic growth, adjusted to 9% excluding client issues.

- Historical Growth: 10% over the past two years despite a 15% headwind.

- Underlying Growth: Average of 12.5% per year excluding client issues.

• Profitability:

- Operating margin concluded at 19% last year.

• Capital Allocation:

- Aggressive share repurchase of $150 million, driven by stock undervaluation.

• Client Concentration:

- Largest customer contributes 6% to revenue.

Operational Updates

• Client Issues:

- Three unique client issues have posed significant challenges.

• New Logos:

- Record number of new logos achieved last year, with two additional in the last quarter.

• Large Deals:

- Defined as contracts with a minimum annual value of $10 million, some exceeding $100 million.

• GenAI Deployments:

- Approximately 20 clients have implemented GenAI solutions.

• Non-FTE Business:

- Represents more than a quarter of total revenue.

Future Outlook

• FY’26 Guidance:

- Anticipated 7% organic growth, potentially reaching 9% when excluding client issues.

• Revenue Visibility:

- 90% of projected revenue is secured through signed client contracts.

• Large Deals:

- Expected to contribute significantly to year-over-year growth.

Q&A Highlights

• Client Decision Making:

- Focus on cost optimization, transformation, and GenAI adoption.

• Macroeconomic Impact:

- Business remains resilient to economic fluctuations due to consistent demand for cost savings.

• Addressable Market:

- Industry penetration is 25% to 30%, with GenAI driving further expansion.

• Cannibalization:

- Not a major concern; automation expands the market and service scope.

• GenAI Use Cases:

- Enhance productivity and create new revenue streams.

Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for more details.

Full transcript - TD Cowen’s 53rd Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference 2025:

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: I’m Brian Bergen. I cover IT services and payments at TD Cowen. Thank you all for joining us. Very pleased to have WNS with us for the next fireside chat. With us we have Arjit Sen, CFO, and David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of the IR.

Thank you both for being here today.

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: Thank you. Pleasure.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: So WNS is a digitally led business process management services company. It combines deep domain knowledge with process expertise and newer technologies to transform and run client operations. It’s a specialist in a range of industries and it leverages a 60,000 plus global workforce with primary delivery locations in India, in The Philippines and South Africa. So guys, again, appreciate you being here. Dave, we’ve talked to you many times in these forums.

We now have the pleasure with Arjun to join, so we appreciate that. Just, Arjun, given given you’re newer in the role of CFO of WNS, can you just talk about maybe how you see the key differentiation for the organization versus competitors? And also to then dovetail that to kind of your key roles and responsibilities in the organization. You’ve been in a couple different seats. Right?

So just talk about that dynamic first from

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: the So, you know, I’ve been with Douglas for fifteen years. I’ve done a multitude of roles across the company. I have before this, I was a corporate financial controller where we’re actually managing all aspects of finance. So and I’ve had the privilege of working closely with Keshav and I was to our CFO, Sanjay, in the last fifteen years and most of the strategic sort of stuff that we’ve done in the in the organization. So from that perspective, you know, when I joined the company, were about 300,000,000, and we’re significantly bigger now.

So it’s been good. It’s been a good journey. And of course, now that all is significantly larger, so it’s exciting to be here and talk to all of you as well. So, yeah. In terms of how we are different, look, we’ve always gone to market saying we are a vertically led company.

Right? That story still stands. We are, you know, from our perspective, domain is very, very critical. We are domain led. We and we lead domain along with technology analytics and create industry leading solutions.

That’s a 40. Right? Vertically led, vertically oriented, combining technology and analytics. And technology and analytics for us is a key component solution. Right?

So any solution that we offer has all the three components. That’s why we bundle it in. So if you look at our business today, you know, when we say vertically, the insurance is our biggest vertical. More than a quarter of our revenue was actually on the insurance side. So that’s the We work in eight industries.

We have deep domain in all those eight industries. If you look at from a horizontal play, our biggest horizontal is what we call industry specific services, which is basically where we create solutions of just specific industry, right? Say, for example, in the insurance, it could be claims processing. In healthcare for North America, could be benefit utilization. In shipping, it could be processing documentation by shipping clients.

And I could go on and on. So that’s a core competency, right? And we combine that with technology and analytics and create a very compelling solution. So that to me is the key differentiator.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Alright. And and if we package that then in the sound bite for the investment proposition around WNS, take that to the next step then.

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: Yeah. So look, the key here is, you know, and we’ve had some conversation with some of you today. Right? For us, it is, you know you know, we are looking at AI, gen AI, and all agentic AI. Right?

But the way we’re looking at these components, these are components for us as an end to end solution to the business proposition of our clients. Right? So we don’t go to our clients saying, we will give you a Gen AI solution. We’ll go to the client saying, if this is a if this is what you’re looking for, this is a solution, and this solution will incorporate best in class technology, best in class journey, combined with the domain understanding of a business. That’s the core proposition.

Right? And one of the things that, you know, that we are very proud of is the fact that, you know, our non FTE business mix is not a a quarter more than a quarter of business is non FTE, right? And that also helps us because when we when we create the solutions, we are actually able to tell clients that, you know, we will lead you to a certain outcome instead of getting work done about what is an FTE data, and so on. So that’s the proposition of inter clients. Okay.

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: Yeah. And look, and I think when you look at, to kind of deep dive into what domain means for us, right, it’s the fact that in order to design processes and to automate processes that deliver the kinds of results and the kinds of outcomes that our clients are looking for, the critical component is to understand the process, to understand the workflow, to understand the operations of that company because you can understand AI and gen AI and digital and data till the cows come home. The bottom line is if you don’t understand how that business operates, creating a solution that drives the kinds of outcomes that clients are looking for isn’t possible. So, you know, we actually are excited to see that what we’ve built and what we’ve created as a differentiator in the company, we believe has become critical to what everyone is now seeing as a way to drive the kinds of results and the kinds of revenue growth that are required.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Yeah. To actually get scaled adoption of those

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: solutions. Exactly. Yeah.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Yeah. sense. Okay. When we talk about growth performance here and before we get into the current demand, I think it’s important to kind of frame, you know, what’s been moving through the the company here the last two years. There’s been a lot of different, I’d say, large client choices that have masked otherwise underlying growth in the broader portfolio that’s acting better.

When you kind of just step back and think about the what you reported in fiscal twenty twenty four and what you’re looking at growing in 2025, Just talk to us about that that reported versus the true underlying if we pull out some of these large client, you know, decisions.

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: Yeah. Let me start, and then maybe Dave can pitch in. Look. I think you know, look at our business. Look.

We’ve had three idiosyncratic client issues, right, that actually created a disproportionate sort of headwind for our business, right. But if you pair it out, and, you know, let’s look at last quarter. If you look at sequential quarter on quarter growth, right, q three and q four, we grew sequentially. We, you know, we told the story, and we grew sequentially 3% q three and q four. But if you look at q two itself, which is the quarter in which we actually had the impact of large health care client ramp down, If you exclude the impact of the large health care client, even in Q2, grew, right?

So the point I’m trying to make is that the growth for us has been there. It has just got masked by the disproportionate impact of those three clients, right? If you look at last year, we went and said that we’ve actually won the maximum number of new logo last year, right? That is the growth sort of we started the traction, the new business we saw last year, right? We announced new logos.

We launched deals, sorry. We announced two in the last quarter. Again, and also the growth momentum is there, right? When you look at the guidance for FY ’twenty six, we’ve said it’s 9%, seven % organic and 2% inorganic. But in that 7%, there is also a 2% headwind because of those two client issues, right?

So we exclude that, then even for FY ’twenty, the current guidance is actually 9% organic, right, which I think puts us pretty much in the sort of leading growth trajectory amongst most of the peer set companies here. So I think that’s the underlying story, And, you know, again, year on year will be a metric to be challenged in q one because we had In q one of last year, we had the impact of large health care client. But as you start going on to q three q two and q three onwards, you’ll also see the year on year metrics also looking showing very dramatic differences in terms of outcomes.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Okay. No. So as you lap that in ’1 q, the optics certainly

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: Yeah. The optics are improving. And again, just to kind of reiterate what Arjun’s talking about here and to put some context to it. Over the last two years, we’ve grown the business about 10% in total. In the face of a 15% headwind from these client specific issues.

So ex those issues, this business has grown on average 12.5% per year, which would put us amongst the industry leaders. So, you know, certainly, these things did happen, and we have to face that reality. But the bottom line is that underlying momentum in this business has been there, continues to be there, and the reality now is, as you look at, to Tarej’s point, the Q3 performance, the Q4 performance, the guidance into fiscal twenty twenty six, a high degree of visibility to getting back to that high single, low double digit growth

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: rate despite, you know, what’s been a choppy macro. And through this, Brian, we’ve also ensured that our profitability is up there, right? So we ended last year at 99% operating margin, which again, to us, is one of the leading amongst the industry, right? So that’s, you know, gives us confidence that the underlying financial is also healthy. You know, we last year, we we did a significantly aggressive share repurchase because we

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Yeah.

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: We thought that our stock was fundamentally undervalued, right? So we did aggressive share purchase. We did extensive capital expenditure last year. We did M and A. So despite a client specific headwind, we actually kept investing the business.

You know, we’ve sort of leveraged our balance sheet. We’ve stayed true to our capital allocation philosophy. So from that perspective, I know you know, from our perspective, it gives them a very good heads as we go into this year because investments are ongoing, and we are seeing the good momentum back. And I think what Dave said, you know, we have 90% we’ve announced 90% visibility guidance, which is what historically we used to do, which also gives a lot of confidence for this year.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Okay. Okay. Very good. Let’s talk about some of that client conversation that’s driving that level of growth and what you know, in in those new engagements that you’re pursuing, what are the top priorities within the client base? And talk about, like, the pace of their decision making.

How has that evolved?

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: Yeah. Look, so let me let me separate this, right? So there are, and, you know, I’ve had some questions today about large deals, right? So look, in the we’ve on the large deals last October, we said that, you know, we are not able to predict the closure pattern of large deals because of very nature of these deals, right? These are deals that are at a fairly complex level.

They’re multi tower. They involve multiple levels of of division at the corporate exec level, sometimes the board level. These are fundamentally there’s fundamental change management activity at the client level. So predicting the closure of these deals for us is difficult. That’s why we took a call last year that we will only include these deals in the guidance once we sign them.

So that’s on the large deals. But for a run rate business, which is the one, three, five million dollar deals, we are seeing a lot of conversations. There is a clear need for clients to look at cost optimization, transformation, looking at how to change the process using Gen AI. And those conversations are happening, right? And that’s why and the outcome is that is the sort of new logo win we talked about last year, right?

So that pipeline is churning, right? And again, that all of that is leading to the sort of guidance that we are talking about this year. So short answer for me is that on the large deals, yeah, there is We will, you know, there are a lot of conversations. The deals are real, but the timing of it is not known. But the run rate, one three five million deals, we are seeing good momentum.

There’s a lot of conversation. The market opportunity is real,

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: and we are feeling quite optimistic. I also think it’s important to understand that historically, we never used large deals as a catalyst for growing, right? We’ve traditionally been able to grow this business high single, low double digits through expanding our existing relationships and bringing in new logos that are 9,000,000 to start. So to the extent that we can continue on that cadence and sign a couple of large deals over and above that, we’re kind of viewing this as almost a separate sales channel. And the approach is different and the cadence is different.

But the reality is we think it creates additional opportunity for us, some this year, but more so into next year because the large deals that we signed this year, by the time they ramp, aren’t going to generate meaningful dollars this year, but they create good visibility to very healthy year over year growth.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Okay. And as far as the size of these, I mean, do they vary in a big way or are we talking kind of ten, twenty, 40? How large, but an ACV type of size

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: the large deal, our definition, is a minimum of $10,000,000 of annual contract value. But some of these deals are actually in excess of $100,000,000 Okay.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: And as far as, you know, this becoming part of the conversation now in the last year plus, what did something change in the market? Is it just a natural evolution of your organization? Have you gotten bigger? Talk to us on on where we are talking about large deals now.

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: So we actually look was a concerted effort for us to get in that space. We made some investments, you know, we’ve hired some senior leaders who are looking at that space, who are talking to client CXO. So for us, that’s an additional challenge of growth, right? Like Dave said, you know, historically, we’ve paid in the one three five. We said there is a potential for us to curate and co create deals, the 10,000,000 plus space.

And that’s a to me, that’s a separate channel. And we and and, you know, when all this comes together, I think when we have a healthy mix of $1.03 5 and 10,000,000 deals, and I think the the runway momentum is gonna be fairly more positive than where we are today. So that’s the opportunity, if you ask me. Yeah.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: So you get the muscle going on planning these, converting these, all of a sudden, we’re lapping that

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: And as we start closing more, I think we’ll also have a sense of pattern predictability

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Right.

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: So we can model these even more effectively. Right? That’s the that’s the Hopefully, we

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: get less macro uncertainty. Yeah.

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: Absolutely.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Are you seeing anything different by industry or geo based on on behavior right now, just amid the the daily tweets?

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: Not really. I know. I don’t I don’t

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: think so. Okay. Mean, I I yeah. I think overall, if you look at our core business, 90% plus of what we do, right, it’s automating processes, it’s transforming processes, it’s delivering business outcomes. Clients need this independent of what’s going on in the macro.

The second thing is these things all save money. Yeah. So, the reality is, if the clients made a strategic decision that they need to find a partner to help them get their business from A to B, The fact that we do that and save them money is independent of the macro environment. Okay.

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: Okay. Yeah. And Brian, you look look at our business, right, and again, you know, about half our business is North America, and the remaining half is actually sort of covered over Europe, APAC, and UK, and so on, right? So we have a nice balanced portfolio, right? So why we’re not seeing any impact of the conversation right now?

But even from a portfolio perspective, are nicely balanced that potentially tomorrow, if something were to come up, at least, you know, we have a fifty-fifty sort of split between the geographies, right? So that’s a I mean, that’s so that also gives a little more sort of cover and sort of in terms of where we are versus our peers who are potentially more probably more one geo specific.

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: And it’s not just geographic diversification, right? If you look at, know, Arjun mentioned earlier, our largest vertical is insurance and it’s 25%, twenty six % So we’re very well diversified across verticals, across horizontals, across service offerings, across geographies. So, from that perspective, we’ve also got a healthy degree of protection and we don’t have heavy customer concentration either. Our largest customer is 6% of revenue. So Okay.

Feel pretty good about the opportunity.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Okay. Okay. When you look at the opportunities around larger deals, does it bring in adjacent service capabilities versus the traditional offering that you’ve had? Is there anything new and different there? Has it changed?

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: I don’t think so. I mean, I think, to be honest with you, what clients are looking for is our ability to solve problems and what those problem solvings have to include is our demonstrated experience, demonstrated capability. So it’s not like we’re trying to sell something new that we haven’t sold before, right? The models are a little bit more non FTE than traditional businesses. There’s more technology, more automation, more integration in these deals.

But the results and the outcomes and the types of things that customers are looking for us to deliver are not fundamentally different than what we’re doing today for our customers. Okay.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: So it doesn’t necessarily require, let’s say, an IT services motion adjacent to it?

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: Absolutely not. Part of the

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: kind of work we are playing in. And look, the other thing is as we are closing these large deals and given the kind of stakeholders we’re interacting with, you know, for some of the deals that we have we are sort of ramping up, we are seeing a lot more follow-up conversations around other areas as well. So that’s the interesting part. Right? Because, you know, you we are talking that at the exact levels, so there is an immediate need for us for them to as and as we stabilize processes and they get to know us, you know, we are seeing more conversation in other adjacent areas.

That also creates more opportunity for us.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Okay. Okay. Okay. So now as we bring it back to numbers, so 7% or so organic, 9% adjusted for that two points. When you talk about the visibility to that number, give us a sense on where that stands currently versus where you were in the past.

And then also too is, you know, let’s say we do get a more encouraging spending pattern from clients. How much discretionary, you know, activity could could contribute here for you in fiscal twenty six?

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: So look, when we said 90% visibility of guidance, what we mean is if you look at our revenue, 90% of revenue is today signed by from the clients, and we have got projections covering to that amount. So that’s where we need 90%, right? Historically, we have seen, barring the previous year, we’ve always gone in with a 90% visibility to the guidance historically, right? And we’ve talked about this publicly as well. And in all these cases, when we’d started the year 90%, we actually met, in some cases, exceed the guidance.

So that gives us a confidence that our historical basis of projection works, right? So that’s the that’s the that’s the core of it if you look at it from a guidance perspective.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: So Okay. So and then discretionary activities, you’ve you’ve had some some acquisitions that have helped you there. Talk about what’s happening So

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: the discretionary portfolio of our business is about 10 to 11%. So it’s not a it’s unlike some of our other peers, which are in the news recently. Our discretionary expenditures, therefore, that much lesser, right? So of course, if the macro situation improves and that spend goes up, then of course, that means a further tailwind for our side. But from a risk perspective, because 1011%, it’s not going to be disproportionately make an impact to our guidance should the macro deteriorate further, right?

So that’s the way we’re looking at it, right? So 90% visibility for us gives us confidence that, you know, we have a good runway to meet the numbers. And discretionary being of, you know, low double digits means that any macro event will not have a disproportionate impact on numbers. The way I’ll put it. I don’t know if you want to add anything.

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: No, I was just going to say, and more importantly, I think when you look at the visibility, right, the visibility doesn’t assume that we have to go out and sell x amount of projects to hit that number.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Right.

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: To the extent that we have projects that we’re executing on now that are contractually committed, that’s included in the 90%. But we don’t need the macro to improve and we don’t need to sell more discretionary work to hit our numbers.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: All right. At that midpoint, you’re effectively assuming a stable backdrop.

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: Correct.

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: Yeah.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Yeah. Okay.

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: Which is where we’ve been for two years now.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Yep. Okay. All right. Let’s talk about just Gen demand. Talk about how that has progressed.

I think in the last call, said roughly 20 clients that have deployed Gen AI solutions. Can you just elaborate on that? What are common use cases? What are you seeing across the

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: Sure. You know, I think what we’ve seen is really two different categories of use cases as it relates to GenAI. The first would be about productivity and cost reduction, right? How do we take what we’re already doing and leverage a tool like Gen AI or now increasingly AgenTic AI to make that more efficient, right, to require less labor to deliver the same set of services? And I think this is where, by and large, the Wall Street community has been heavily focused in terms of their knowledge and understanding of Gen AI.

But what I would tell you is when you look at the Gen AI use cases and you look at the things that our clients are asking for us to do, there are as many, if not more, use cases that they’re looking at exploring that are about creating new capabilities, that are about changing how they go to market, that are about new revenue streams. So I think while the world seems to view this as a productivity tool, our clients are looking at this as a potential way for them to create differentiation, create competitive advantage, and go to market differently. So, when you look at use cases, obviously, we’re seeing things like agent assist, where we use a tool to help agents who answer the phone be more efficient and more effective in what they do. But we’re also seeing opportunities in Gen AI and use cases in Gen AI about medical summarization, where we can create new opportunities and offerings, about ways for us to manage shipping and logistics and bills of lading, leveraging a tool that can help fill in gray areas on unstructured data as it comes in. So we’re seeing great opportunities kind of across the board with GenAI.

The challenge is, as I’m sure you’re aware and as you’re hearing from other folks, is that in a lot of cases where we have these capabilities and we’re ready to deploy them, our clients aren’t ready to integrate them and implement them at scale. So, lots

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: of are some

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: of the factors? I guess, what’s the most common factor there that’s causing some aversion or

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: I think there are three factors, right? One would be the fact that their data or their infrastructure is not ready. The second would be perceived risk, right? Nobody wants to be first. And the third would be all the things that you’re hearing about cost of compute, about data privacy, cyber security, about discrimination and bias in the underlying models.

So there there’s the risk component to it. There’s the cost component to it. And then there’s the the practicality of the things that they need to be they need to do to be organizationally ready to leverage what these tools and technologies are capable of. Yeah.

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: And Brian, you know, I I talked about it initially as well. For us, JN AI is another component of the solution set. Right? So it’s not that we are going and telling we will we will build JN AI for you. What we are saying, our solution sets incorporate journey components, and we Because we know the operations, we are able to train those models in in the areas where it’s required.

So I think that’s the fundamental difference, right? And that’s where the use cases are seeing. We are seeing traction, And that’s the model we’re also adopting with agent decay. Right? And now we are also seeing how to integrate some model agent decay into a solution set.

And that’s the approach that we’ve done historically, and that’s the way we are looking at the entire journey, I think. Right?

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: How are you approaching that from, like, an IP standpoint? And do you think about enabling newer workforce to

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: So we will create tool sets, for example. We’ll create a solution set for the shipping industry, for example, which talks about a certain effective way of managing the entire shipping documentation, which is an exhaustive process. For us, the IP is a solution set, And the IP will have many sort of components of technology, AI, Gen AI, but for us, the IP is a solution set. Yeah. So we go to the tell the client that this is a solution for you to generate, run your shipping document.

And look, look, look, shipping has historically been a very outsourcing of this industry, right? And we are seeing even products like this are creating enough excitement in industry, which is historically not outsourced. So that’s the sort of IP, core IP. I’m just thinking of shipping example. We are building similar IPs in all our industry sets, and that is what I said is, you know, industry specific processes, which is 40 north of 40% of business.

That’s why we’re to create IPs because we understand the process, and we are able to integrate the technology and analytics into creating a solution. Okay.

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: That’s the IP. But but I I think to look at the IP and say that, yes, there’s a product, if you will, that’s been created. The reality is we don’t want to sell products. What we want to sell is productized offerings or productized solutions. So how do we wrap our services around what that tool is capable of doing?

And I think the best way to look at it is almost as reusable components. How do you create pieces that you can pull to create a solution for a client and integrate those together with their existing technology environment as well as services to create an outcome.

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: And that also gives us a lot of headroom, Brian, in terms of looking at non Feet sort of commercial models. Right? You know, historically, more than a quarter of our business today is actually non Feet. You know, we think from our from our major peers, and again, I think we are I I think that’s a that’s advantageous number for us. And some of these solutions that’s actually help us move away from the Feet business into more transaction outcome, UTP sort of models.

Right? And that’s how this also helps.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Yeah. Make sure you gain the value there as that happens. Sure. Okay. Okay.

Naturally, in the market, there’s a lot of concern as in the services space, cannibalization arguments, things like What what do you think is misplaced in that argument?

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: I I think it’s a couple of things, right? One, I think, you know, A, as I mentioned earlier, the fact that these services and solutions are solely about cost reduction, automation, productivity, right, versus new services, new solutions, new capabilities. I think that’s one. The second is that while we know that certainly if we deploy more technology or better technology into our existing book of business, there will be some downward pressure on same store sales. But the reality is, if you look at what these tools and technologies are doing, there are two huge benefits, right?

One is it expands the addressable market. The scope of what clients are willing to let us do that they wouldn’t let us do previously because we have technology enabled services and solutions expands, right? So, and that kind of goes to your question about the use cases around generative AI, to have a medical summarization tool and to sell that to a customer that they wouldn’t have even considered it or known about it prior. The second, and I think the bigger opportunity, is when you look at our industry, it’s 25% to 30% penetrated. To the extent that these tools and technologies and the services that are wrapped around them create competitive differentiation, drive compelling outcomes, what it’s going to do is force the 70%, seventy five % that haven’t partnered with a services company to have to leverage that capability in order to be competitive.

If we can use a Gen AI tool to reduce the amount of time it takes to process an insurance claim from fourteen days to ten days and improve customer sat from a three to a four and reduce the amount of fraud, right? How long before the companies that haven’t done these kinds of things are going to be knocking on our doors to do this? So, the logical offset to some downward pressure as a result of productivity is an expanding addressable market and an acceleration in adoption.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: And we’ve talked about, I mean, different automation cycles in the past giving productivity. Are you seeing any notable difference in the increment of productivity with AgenTic and GenAI and AgenTic versus an RPA before?

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: Think the opportunity is bigger, but the actual implementation and integration at this point isn’t. Not yet. Right? So, I think it was much easier for a customer to move to an RPA led solution than it is for them to move to a Gen AI, a Gen Tech AI solution.

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: I think, Brian, the the addressable market is what we should

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: look at. Right? It’s not

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: a zero sum game where, you know, we are all completely the same pie. I think almost 670% is underpenetrated. Right? That’s the opportunity. And like Dave said, if Jainea leads to competitive advantage, it’ll force more and more clients to actually look at ways to bake them as part of the solution set.

And that’s when it gets really interesting for a company like us. That’s the opportunity.

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: And and to and to your point, Brian, we we know from the RPA experience, and RPA in its earliest stages was, you know, not much different than a glorified Excel macro. Right? We know that clients struggled to implement and integrate RPA tools themselves. They they didn’t know how to change the process. They didn’t know how to change the skill sets.

They didn’t know how to clean the data so that the tool could process them efficiently. Gen AI is that on steroids. So if clients couldn’t figure out how to do RPA themselves, there’s no way they’re gonna figure out how to use Gen AI themselves, which means the need for a company like ours just goes up dramatically.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Okay. I’m gonna pause. Any questions? About a minute and a half. Good.

Yeah. Talk a little bit about the large clients that you’re breaking down. Can you talk about, like if you back those out, can you talk about a little bit the performance that you see within like the top 10 client cohort in the past few years? How is that trending? How has it been trending in recent months, like March and April?

Is there any sort of trajectory coming?

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: Look, I think if you strip out the client specific issues that we’ve had, again, what you’d see is that we were growing low double digits the last couple of years. And I think what you’d see is that within the top client base, there has not been a material change in customer concentration. So the reality is our clients are growing with us, which is what we want to see.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: Last topic, we’ll talk cap allocation. So, you had an acquisition this past year, but as you look forward here, it sounds like, you know, share repo acquisitions may both be on the table. Yeah. Kind of talk, what are your priorities? And and, you know, I think last year you did about $150,000,000 in stock.

You talked about that opportunistic approach. How are you thinking about things today?

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: Look, see, our capital allocation model, Brian, is is very consistent. There are four things we will do. One is the share buyback. Second is tuck in m and a opportunities. Again, you know, we we always look at M and A from a competitive position perspective.

So that will keep continuing. We look at, you know, capital expenditure, both in terms of infrastructure augmentation as well as developing some of the solutions we talked about, right, which are client leading solutions. And fourth is, of course, should do repayment of our debt, right. So last year, like you rightly said, we did a very aggressive share repurchase because we were we thought we we think the stock is fundamentally undervalued from where it should be. So we had a very aggressive repurchase.

Our repurchase anyway for this year is already ongoing as we see. And if you ask me from a capital allocation philosophy, we will continue to be to deploy our balance sheet in those four areas. Like I said, last year, despite our sort of our revenue pressures, we stayed true to our capital allocation philosophy. And we think even this year, we will we will continue to stand by it. All right.

Very good.

Brian Bergen, Analyst, TD Cowen: We’re going to leave it at that. Thank you both for the time.

David Mackie, EVP Finance and Head of IR, WNS: Thank you.

Arjit Sen, CFO, WNS: Thank you. Appreciate it.

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