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IT services rearview mirror: 3QFY21 earnings review

Strongest third quarter in the past five years

* The Indian IT services industry reported one of its strongest third quarters in FY21, delivering USD revenue growth of 4.9% QoQ, helped by increased technology spends across all key industries (despite adverse seasonality), pick up in deal sizes, and faster conversion from pipeline to orders.

* The outlook for CY21 continue to improve, with an increase in deal TCV (median book-to-bill at 1.2x v/s 0.9x in 3QFY20, Exhibit 6) and pipeline across companies. Managements (Exhibit 16, 17) further highlighted that clients are rolling out multi-year Digital and Cloud transformation projects, further improving longterm visibility in this space.

Robust headcount addition on back of record high utilization…

* Total headcount addition for 3QFY21 stood at 39k as against a net decline of 3k employees in the past nine months. This came in on the back of the highest ever utilization reported by IT Services companies.

* Attrition for 3QFY21 was the lowest ever at 11.3% (average for our IT coverage universe) v/s 16.2% in 3QFY20. This is expected to rise over the next few quarters, despite wage hikes in 4QFY21/1QFY22. This remains a key worry for margin performance as a rapid rise in attrition may require intervention.

* With utilization levers at a historical high (Exhibit 11), margin improvement will be driven more by operating leverage going forward.

…with continuously increasing offshore mix

* The COVID-19 lockdown continues to act as a tailwind on margin in 3QFY21, with higher offshore mix and lower travel expense (Exhibit 10) aiding operating margin. Our largecap coverage has also seen a ~150bp YoY drop (Exhibit 8) in sub-contracting expense, partially helped by higher share of offshore effort.

* Recent acquisitions (TCS – Postbank and Pramerica, Infosys – Rolls Royce and Daimler, and Wipro – Metro AG) suggests higher offshoring intensity and cost take out, indicating higher comfort with offshore delivery at large clients.

* Tier I margin for 3QFY21 (Exhibit 7), on the back of high utilization and offshore mix, stood at 24.1%, an increase of 90bp QoQ and 270bp YoY.

Expect mid-teen growth and rangebound margin for FY22E

* We continue to see Cloud migration, Digital transformation, and user experience as multi-year opportunities for Indian IT companies. These will be complimented by cost takeout deals as clients normalize their budgets to increase spending on Digital transformation. Led by robust order book and decent deal conversion, we expect mid-teens growth for the sector in FY22E.

* We expect margins to be rangebound as some cost pertaining to travel, normalization of utilizations, and wage hikes will now gradually return. However, this impact should be mostly offset by operating leverage due to higher growth and ongoing pyramid rationalization.

* Despite valuations running at the upper end of the historical range (Exhibit 14), we retain our attractive stance on the sector and continue to prefer INFO and HCLT as our preferred picks among Tier I and PSYS, LTTS, and MPHL among Tier II IT companies.

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