Amdocs - Q4 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to Amdocs' Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2023 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentations, there'll be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question at that time, please press star one one on your telephone. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference to the host, Mr. Matt Smith, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Matt Smith (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, operator. Before we begin, I need to call your attention to our disclaimer statements on slide two of the presentation. It notes that some of the comments today may be forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties, including as described in Amdocs' SEC filings, and that we will discuss certain financial information that is not prepared in accordance with GAAP. For more information regarding our use of non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations of these measures, we refer you to today's earnings release, which will also be furnished with the SEC on Form 6-K. Participating on the call with me today are Shuky Sheffer, President and Chief Executive Officer of Amdocs Management Limited, and Tamar Rapaport-Dagim, Chief Financial and Operating Officer. To support today's earnings call, we are providing a presentation which can be found on the investor relations section of our website.

As always, a copy of today's prepared remarks will also be posted immediately following the conclusion of this call. On today's agenda, Shuky will recap our business and financial achievements for the full year fiscal 2023, and we'll update you on the continued progress we've made executing against our strategic growth framework, including exciting developments in cloud and generative AI. Shuky will finish by commenting on our financial outlook for the full fiscal year 2024, after which Tamar will provide additional details on our fourth quarter financial performance, our forward guidance, and our continued commitment to ESG. And with that, I'll turn it over to Shuky. Go ahead.

Shuky Sheffer (President and CEO)

Thanks, Matt, and good afternoon to everyone joining us on the call today. To begin, I want to sincerely thank our talented and diverse group of global employees for a successful 2023, in which we continued to bring value to our customers while developing the innovative technology that forms the backbone of today's seamless digital world. More so, I would like to express my deep gratitude to our employees in Israel, which in the days following the horrific attack on October 7, have shown tremendous resilience, dedication, and commitment to Amdocs and each other. My heartfelt sympathies go to all of those who have lost loved ones, while directly suffering because of these terrible events. As a global company, we support a development center around the world.

I'm proud the way Amdocs family has come together to support one each other in recent weeks, and we will continue to give absolute priority to the safety and well-being of our people, doing everything necessary to ensure they have the support they need to navigate in difficult times. With that, with that said, I'm pleased to report solid fourth quarter results consistent with our guidance, wrapping up another strong year of healthy possible revenue growth and robust free cash flow generation in fiscal 2023. Summarizing the fiscal year highlights on slide seven. Record revenue of approximately $4.89 billion, grew 7.7% in constant currency, as we supported our customer multi-year journey to the cloud, digital modernization, network automation, and the deployment of monetization of 5G and fiber networks.

We are also excited to report that the revenue from cloud activities grew at a double-digit rate and exceeded 20% of our Amdocs total revenue for the first time in fiscal 2023. Closing 12 months backlog was record $4.15 billion, up approximately 4.5% from a year ago, and we delivered double-digit non-GAAP diluted EPS growth of 11.5, well above the 10% midpoint of our original outlook, reflecting top line growth, margin expansion, and our consistent cash return to shareholders. Turning to slide eight. Fiscal 2023 was another year of a strong market recognition and many key wins as we continued to play a key role in our customer modernization journeys. We significantly expanded activities within T-Mobile, cloud-based digital transformation, and continued to progress AT&T's multi-year modernization.

Additionally, we won major awards at Bell Canada, Three UK, Globe and PLDT in the Philippines, and many other customers, including partnership at Disney, which Amdocs Vubiquity is providing the direct-to-consumer platform support. Our global breadth of activities and customer win translated to a strong performance across regions in fiscal 2023. North America had a record deal, as did Europe, which delivered strong double-digit growth as we progressed several modernization projects on behalf of leading operators like Vodafone, Wind Tre in Italy, and PPF Group in multiple affiliates. Rest of the world grew sequentially in Q4, delivering its strongest quarter in four years as we supported activities at Globe and PLDT in the Philippines and M1 in Singapore. For fiscal 2023, overall rest of the world was lower for the year. Focused execution was another hallmark of fiscal 2023, as measured by a record number of project milestone achievements.

Amdocs continued to support 5G fixed wireless across expansion in North America, including launch at T-Mobile and AT&T, as well as the strategic mobile offering with Comcast, Charter and Altice. Overseas, we executed successful deliverables at Three UK, Vodafone, XL Axiata in Southeast Asia, and many others. Managed services is another record deal, which include recent multi-year expansion in the UK, and expansion in new Vodafone Netherlands, as well as AT&T Cricket, Dish Network, Globe Telecom, and other customer, as reported earlier in the year. We also strengthened our managed services offering, launching our next-generation Amdocs Cloud Management Platform, which integrates generative AI capabilities from our amAIz framework to enhance operating efficiency and agility.

Now, moving to slide nine, I would like to update you with respect to our growth strategy, the aim of which is to bring the market-leading innovation our customer needs to accelerate the journey to the cloud, create seamless digital experiences for consumer and B2B, launch and monetize new 5G services, and deliver dynamic connected experiences with real-time automated networks. Let me begin, however, with generative AI, which following the strategy we outlined last quarter, I would like to provide an update as we accelerate execution across the various domains. We think of our generative AI strategy in three pillars. First, the infusion of generative AI into our CSP product suite, including copilot capabilities and GenAI native functions in flagship products via Enterprise Catalog, CPQ, and monetization platforms.

As a reminder, all of these capabilities are powered by our recently launched amAIz GenAI framework, which provides our proprietary telco taxonomy that improve accuracy and ensure context-aware responses. A library of industry-tailored use cases keeps the packaged common functionality, and importantly, a robust trusted AI layer that provides data security, observability, and control. Second, we are providing a foundation that leverage generative AI to address key telecom industry challenges by bringing together our deep telecommunication expertise and unique telco taxonomy to help our customers accelerate their adoption of generative AI. Third, we are building strategic partnership in the space. We previously announced our engagement with Microsoft, where we are collaborating to integrate Microsoft capabilities into our customer engagement platform by leveraging Microsoft's OpenAI capabilities across our portfolio. Today, we also announced a partnership with NVIDIA, a world leader in AI infrastructure.

Together, we will focus on utilizing the NVIDIA generative AI ecosystem to accelerate adoption and innovate, to realize some of the industry's largest opportunistic opportunities, sorry, from network operation to customer care. In general, we are working alongside several of our flagship customer to prioritize high-value developments of generative AI, trying to focus on where we expect to achieve meaningful financial and operational benefits for customer as a result. It's important to highlight that data plays an important role in the utility of generative AI. To that end, we continue to execute on our data strategy, which focus on cleansing, normalization, and classification of the best data generated and stored by our industry, while at the same time ensuring it is readily accessible for generative AI tools.

Finally, we continue to grow our use of generative AI capabilities to drive productivity and efficiency across Amdocs organization, particularly in software development and operations, and we expect it to generate ongoing benefits. Moving to the cloud with slide 10. Customer momentum accelerated in fiscal 2023, reflecting ongoing cloud programs with AT&T, T-Mobile, a new engagement with Three UK, Vodafone Ireland, Wind Tre, KT, Bell Canada, Telus, and Claro Brazil. Our win momentum continued in Q4. AT&T Mexico extended an agreement with Amdocs to provide ongoing operation and support services for Amdocs application being moved to the public cloud. Amdocs supported this role with Rogers in alignment with their real-time rating and metering program. This extended responsibility involves landing Rogers cloud infrastructure to facilitate seamless processes such as CI/CD pipeline, network integration, and quality engineering, testing, and product deployment certification.

Additionally, Australian TPG Telecom awarded Amdocs a multi-year deal to modernize and consolidate TPG's modernization platform on AWS, replacing the current incumbents. Ongoing list of cloud customer activities reflect Amdocs' unique telco industry expertise, robust product offering, leading web-scale provider partnerships, and an ability to remove complexity by delivering end-to-end, fully accountable cloud migration paths. Moreover, we continue to invest in our offering as we aim to further accelerate the industry's cloud journey. For instance, service providers now have the option to migrate an Amdocs classic application to Microsoft Azure or Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, enabling them to leverage existing investments while taking advantage of our leading CS portfolio. Additionally, I'm pleased to announce the recent acquisition of Astadia, which accelerates our customer cloud offering to include highly sophisticated mainframe-to-cloud migration and modernization, end-to-end, from consulting to managed services. Moving to slide 11.

Amdocs remains critical to enabling our customers' digital modernization journeys, including the B2B segment, where service providers have potential to improve their market position with next-generation IT, including the Amdocs Customer Engagement Platform we launched in partnership with Microsoft. As a reminder, Amdocs is already progressing two of the world's largest B2B transformation projects in Comcast and T-Mobile. Another great example is Australian Optus, which recently elected to modernize its enterprise operations with Amdocs' cloud-native B2B portfolio, enabling it to simplify and accelerate the sales journey for Optus agents with end-to-end automated order fulfillment. Elsewhere, Amdocs is working with India's Bharti Airtel to accelerate digital transformation in implementing an innovative monetization platform and automating billing processes to enhance end-to-end user experience.

In Dubai, we work with Etisalat by e&, to revolutionize their in-store retail experience with one of the world's first AI-enabled telco autonomous store, providing a personalized next-generation experience for shoppers. Amdocs collaborates with Public Mobile, Canada's first prepaid subscription phone services, on an eSIM application that enables customers to activate and manage their services completely digitally. Bringing together communication and media, Amdocs MarketONE platform is enabling A1 Group to launch next-gen with the A1 portfolio services offering across six markets. Hughes, part of the EchoStar team, and the EchoStar and Hughes Netflix Preferred Fulfillment Partner of the Year Award for the Americas region, making them the highest performing partner since the program launched. Turning to 5G monetization, slide 11, slide 12. We continue to help service providers launch and monetize innovative offerings for the 5G standalone era.

Amdocs currently has more than 20 cloud-based charging projects in production. Across a range of public, private, and hybrid environments, including the limited CSP in North America. This quarter, we won a multi-year managed services extension with a leading telco in Sub-Saharan Africa, which includes a BSS modernization to monetize 5G and data products while improving customer satisfaction. ATN International from the Caribbean selected Amdocs to transform their monetization operation, demonstrating pivotal step forward, achieving their strategic goals of becoming a truly customer-centric organization. Turning to network automation on slide 13. Fiscal 2023 was the year of progress, during which we supported successful expansion of Dish Wireless 5G open access network, hitting and exceeding FCC commitments to reach 70% of the U.S. population.

Other highlights include key projects with Colt Technology in the U.K., in Canada, Verizon, and the strategic acquisition of TEOCO's service assurance business to strengthen our unique end-to-end service orchestration offering. More recently, Amdocs acquired Procom Consulting, a U.S.-based digital transformation services and business consulting company, primarily serving operators in North America. Procom Consulting is a bold move for Amdocs, providing us with an expanded offering to better support telcos and newly emerging fiber operators that are focused on accelerating the roll-out of fiber networks in the U.S. and the rest of the world. An example is Summit Broadband, a Florida-based fiber optics service provider, which has selected Amdocs for a multi-year deal to uplift their BSS and OSS ecosystem.

Today, we also announced that Amdocs will join AWS Integrated Private Wireless as a strategic integrator, enabling service providers to unlock new innovations in mobile private networks for enterprise customer by bringing together Amdocs mobile private network solution with AWS reliable and secure infrastructure services. Moving to slide 14, fiscal 2023 can be summarized as a highly successful year in which we maintain a market's high win rate, accelerate customer and revenue momentum in cloud, establish technology and industry leadership in generative AI, and reinforce our customer reputation for superb project execution and seamless mission-critical operation support.

Taking a moment to review the current environment on slide 15, Amdocs continues to serve large addressable markets, the size of which has expanded significantly in recent years, as we focus our strategy on delivering innovation to full-service providers to invest their journey to the cloud-based 5G and fiber networks, generative AI, and improved consumer and B2B experience. Amdocs is also a relatively resilient business model, with high recurring revenue streams resulting from our support of mission-critical system under long-term engagements, including managed services. To remind you, however, Amdocs is not immune to an increased level of macro uncertainty and industry pressure, signs of which we shared with you last quarter, as some operators began to prioritize strategic modernization programs while reducing discretionary spending, including investment to enhance legacy systems.

Turning to our outlook on slide 16, we expect revenue growth within a range of 1%-5% for the full fiscal 2024. On one hand, our full year outlook reflects the previously mentioned impact of macro uncertainty and industry pressure, as well as revenue headwinds attributable to reduced legacy system investment of roughly 3%. With that said, we expect another year of double-digit growth in the cloud. Cloud has been one of Amdocs' strategic growth pillars in the last few years and exceeded 20% of revenue in fiscal 2023, as we leverage our position as the industry technology partner of choice for multi-year strategic modernization journeys. As we shared before, we believe the industry is still in the early innings of the cloud journey, a long-term shift to which will be increasingly fueled by the arrival of generative AI.

As we've shown in fiscal 2023, our continued efforts to improve operational excellence through automation and other sophisticated tools are yielding results, added to which is the more recent potential of generative AI to further improve efficiency across our business. As a result, we expect to accelerate the pace of profitability improvement in fiscal 2024, as reflected by our new outlook non-GAAP operating margin in the range of 18.1%-18.7%, the midpoint of which is 60 basis points better than the 2023 results. Additionally, we expect to maintain earning to cash flow conversion of roughly 100% in fiscal 2024, and we expect to return the majority of free cash flow to shareholders in the year ahead. Overall, we are in a great position to deliver double-digit, non-GAAP, diluted earnings per share growth for the fourth consecutive year in fiscal 2024.

In addition, I am pleased to say that the board has today approved a 10% increase in our quarterly cash dividend payment, equating to an annualized yield of roughly 2.3%. With that, let me turn the call over to Tamar for remarks.

Tamar Rapaport-Dagim (CFO and COO)

Thank you, Shuky, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. These are our solid financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter, the highlights of which you can see on slide 18. Record Q4 revenue of approximately $1,243 million was up 6.3% year-over-year in constant currency. On a reported basis, revenue increased 6.5% and was above the midpoint of guidance, including an immaterial impact from foreign currency movements compared to our guidance assumptions. Revenue from the acquisition of Procom Consulting in late August was immaterial this quarter. On a geographical basis, North America delivered a record quarter. Europe delivered strong growth of nearly 20% from a year ago, but declined sequentially because of normal fluctuations in project activity.

Rest of the world grew on a sequential and year-over-year basis to post its best quarter in more than four years, primarily due to improved activity in Southeast Asia. Moving down the income statement, our non-GAAP operating margin of 17.8% was up 20 basis points from a year ago and unchanged as compared with the prior quarter. On the bottom line, non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.42 was slightly above the midpoint of guidance and included non-GAAP effective tax rate of 21.8%, which, as anticipated, was above our annual target range. Note that non-GAAP diluted EPS excludes restructuring charges of $46 million incurred in the quarter. Diluted GAAP EPS was $0.86 for the fourth fiscal quarter, which was above the guidance range of $0.67-$0.81, primarily due to lower than anticipated restructuring charges.

Summarizing fiscal 2023 on slide 19, revenue grew 7.7% in constant currency, in line with our most recent guidance, but slightly below the original 8% midpoint we anticipated at the start of fiscal year. As a new point of disclosure, revenue from cloud activities grew a double-digit rate and exceeded 20% of Amdocs' total revenue for the first time in fiscal 2023. Revenue from cloud activities includes modernization projects using our CES suite or our cloud-enabled classic versions, cloud consulting, cloud migration services, and cloud operations and workloads. To clarify, in some cases, cloud revenue may also overlap with revenue from managed services when above activities are provided to our customers under a multi-year managed services arrangement.

On a regional basis, North America and Europe had record years in fiscal 2023, with the rest of the world saw a slight decline of roughly 2%, despite growth in Southeast Asia. Further highlighting the long-term diversification of our business, while we continue to expand our business in North America, and while it is still our biggest region in fiscal 2023, six of our top 10 customers were located outside North America, two of which were new logos added in the last 10 years. For comparison, a decade ago, only two of our top 10 customers were outside North America. Additionally, the number of countries in which we generate annual revenue of more than $40 million has almost doubled over the 10 years. Some of these new countries added were Italy, Germany, Mexico, India and Malaysia.

On the bottom line, we delivered double-digit non-GAAP diluted earnings per share growth of 11.5% in fiscal year 2023, exceeding 10% midpoint of our initial outlook for the year and driven by strong top line performance, non-GAAP operating margin improvement, and the benefits of our share repurchase activity. Moving to Slide 20, 12-month backlog was a record high at $4.15 billion, up 4.5%. On a sequential basis, our 12-month backlog was up by $10 million in Q4. During Q4, we continued to sign deals with new logos and existing customers. Additionally, existing deals in backlog are progressing, and our managed services renewals remain at close to 100%.

As a reminder, our 12-month backlog has roughly averaged around 80% of forward-looking 12-months revenue over the years and has therefore traditionally served as a good leading indicator of our business. Turning to slide 21, managed services closed out another record year with strong fourth quarter revenue of $718 million, equivalent to about 58% of total revenue. Our managed services engagement support the resiliency of our business with recurring revenue streams, 100% renewal rates, and expanded activities under multi-year engagements. A great example is Three UK, which I am pleased to say, has appointed Amdocs as a single supplier to simplify its IT operations under a five year, under a five-year deal, which extends our relationship following the business recent IT transformation.

As another example, we recently signed a multi-year managed services extension with VodafoneZiggo in the Netherlands, under which we will be responsible for VodafoneZiggo's business systems operations for fixed line and mobile customers. Now, turning to the balances and cash flow highlights on slide 22. DSO of 69 days decreased by five days year-over-year in Q4 and decreased by 10 days sequentially. Unbilled receivables is higher than deferred revenue by $86 million, aggregating the short-term and long-term balances. As a reminder, the net difference between deferred revenue and unbilled receivables fluctuates from quarter to quarter, in line with normal business activities. Reflecting strong execution, we reported free cash flow of $698 million for the full fiscal year 2023, comprised of cash flow from operations of $823 million, less $124 million in net capital expenditures and others.

Full year reported free cash flow included non-recurring restructuring payments of $20 million, which was not assumed in our annual free cash flow guidance of $700 million for fiscal 2023. Overall, we ended the fiscal year with a strong balance sheet and a healthy cash balance of approximately $743 million, including aggregate borrowings of roughly $650 million. Moreover, we have ample liquidity to support our ongoing business needs while retaining the capacity to fund our future growth strategy, including the acquisition of Astadia, which closed in November for a net cash consideration of $775 million. Sorry, $75 million, with additional consideration to be paid later based on achievements of certain performance metrics. Turning to capital allocation on slide 23. We repurchased $155 million of our shares in the fourth quarter and paid cash dividend of $52 million.

Overall, we returned a total of $689 million to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends in fiscal 2023, equating to almost 100% of reported free cash flow. Looking ahead, we expect free cash flow of approximately $750 million in fiscal 2024, which does not include remaining restructuring payments of approximately $26 million. Our free cash flow outlook equates to a conversion rate of approximately 100% relative to non-GAAP net income, and a healthy free cash flow yield of roughly 7.6% relative to Amdocs' current market capitalization. Regarding our capital allocations in fiscal year 2024, we expect to return the majority of our free cash flow to shareholders.

This includes dividends, for which we are pleased to announce a proposed increase of 10% in our quarterly cash payments to a rate of $0.479 per share, subject to shareholder approval at the annual meeting in February, and represent our eleventh consecutive annual dividend increase since our first payment in 2012. Overall, I believe fiscal 2023 was another landmark year of Amdocs, which includes record high revenue, consistent profitability improvement, robust free cash flow generation, and strong double-digit growth in non-GAAP diluted earnings per share. Now, turning to outlook on slide 24. To begin, we are continuing to closely monitor the prevailing level of macroeconomic, geopolitical, business, and operational uncertainty, which remains elevated in the current business environment.

Thus, the first quarter and full year fiscal 2024 financial guidance reflects what we consider to be the most likely outcome based on the information we have today, but we cannot predict all possible scenarios. Beginning with the top line, we expect revenue growth within the range of 1.2%-5.2% year-over-year in constant currency in fiscal 2024. The 3.2% midpoint of which is roughly half organic. We expect a stronger second half to the fiscal year based on our expected plan of execution for deals already in the 12-month backlog, plus new opportunities which we anticipate will convert to signed deals and contribute to revenue this fiscal year. We expect another year of double-digit cloud revenue growth in fiscal 2024.

Additionally, our outlook assumes no material change in the current macroeconomic backdrop and a revenue headwind of roughly 3% attributable to reduced customer investments in legacy system enhancements, among other factors. Our annual outlook includes first fiscal quarter revenue within a range of $1.225 billion-$1.265 billion, and assumes a -$5 million sequential impact from foreign currency fluctuations as compared to Q4. On a reported basis, we expect full-year revenue growth in the range of 1%-5% year-over-year, which anticipates a small but unfavorable impact from foreign currency of approximately 20 basis points year-over-year. Moving down the income statement, we anticipate quarterly non-GAAP operating margin within a new and improved annual target range of 18.1%-18.7%, as shown on slide 25.

Our new target range for fiscal 2024 continues the path of consistent margin expansion we have delivered over the years. Moreover, the 18.4% midpoint of our new range represents an accelerated improvement of 60 basis points as compared with our full-year non-GAAP margin of 17.8% in fiscal 2023. The improvement in margin will happen gradually through the year. This reflects the cumulative benefit of our continual initiatives to improve operational excellence through automation, other sophisticated tools, and disciplined resource management, added to which we expect the implementation of GenAI to drive additional cost and efficiency improvements across our business. Below the operating line, we anticipate that foreign currency fluctuations and cost of hedging will impact our non-GAAP net interest and other expense line in the range of several million dollars on a quarterly basis.

We expect that our non-GAAP effective tax rate will remain within an unchanged annual target range of 13%-17% for the full fiscal year 2024. Bringing everything together on slide 26, we expect non-GAAP diluted earnings per share growth in the range of 8%-12% for the full year fiscal 2024, the midpoint of which is expected to mark the fourth straight year of near double-digit growth. Similarly, we expect to deliver double-digit total shareholders return for the fourth year running in fiscal 2024, including our outlook for non-GAAP earnings per share growth, plus a dividend yield of about 2.3% based on the newly proposed quarterly cash payment to be approved by shareholders at February's annual meeting. Moving to slide 27.

This August, we published our latest CSR and ESG report for the period 2022 to June 2023, which we showcased with our second annual ESG webinar for investors in September. During Q4, we continued our focus on the environment, digital inclusion, and diversity, which represent key pillars of our ESG strategy. Among the highlights, we announced our path to carbon neutrality for Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2024, launched a program to support over 1,000 women for digital and financial inclusion in Mexico, and recognized Hispanic Heritage Month, celebrating Latino communities in North America. I'd also like to make a new comment about actions we have taken following the terrible events in Israel on October 7, since which our primary concern has been the safety and security of our employees and their families and on providing support to them during this difficult time.

We are in continuous contact with all employees in Israel, sharing specific information about the support and services we can provide for them and their families. Amdocs is also supporting the wider community. Over the last several weeks, we have donated to mental and physical healthcare organizations and communities in Israel South. Many Amdocs employees have also volunteered their time to support evacuated families, local farmers, and other initiatives. I've also been incredibly humbled and proud to hear from our employees worldwide, the vast majority of which are located outside of Israel. With our support and development centers around the world, we have come together as one family to serve our customers seamlessly, providing 24/7 service and support to all our customers and business operations worldwide without interruption. With that, back to you, Shuky.

Shuky Sheffer (President and CEO)

Thanks, Tamar. As you can probably tell from our remarks today, we are pleased with our solid financial and operational performance in fiscal 2023, and we are looking forward to delivering the fourth consecutive year of double-digit Non-GAAP earnings per share growth in fiscal 2024. With that, we are ready to take your questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Again, to ask a question, please press star one one. We do ask that you please limit yourself to one question and a follow-up. One moment, please. Our first question comes from the line of Ashwin Shirvaikar of Citigroup. Your line is open.

Ashwin Shirvaikar (Managing Director)

Thank you, and good to hear from both of you. I guess the first question I have is with regards to the double-digit EPS growth, plus the dividend, of course, on top of that, and the flexibility that you seem to have with regards to scaling up margin improvement to make up for the lower rev growth. How much visibility do you have into that scaling up of margin improvement in terms of each of the factors that you have named?

Shuky Sheffer (President and CEO)

Hi, Ashwin, good to hear you. And we have a very good visibility. As a reminder, we are talking for at least the last three years about all the automation, improvements we are doing, and investing cloud processes and many, many sophisticated tools we are implementing across the organization, both on operation and development life cycle. Additionally, if you remember, we announced already in Q3 that we are doing a cost-cut process in Amdocs that we actually almost completed in Q4. I think another layer that we increasingly seeing impacting our profitability is all the innovation that we see and the efficiency from generative AI.

So you need to assume that the majority of the cost-cutting, not all, but the majority was taking place already in Q4, so we wanted to be in a position that we in 2024, we already realized all the benefits of this activity. So I would say, I would argue this is a very good visibility.

Ashwin Shirvaikar (Managing Director)

Understood. And then, want to get a little deeper into sort of the revenue growth range, 1%-5%. How much of that is a, I guess, inorganic contribution? And with regards to the revenue headwind of the 3%, that's kinda attributable to reduced customer investment in legacy sort of system enhancements. Could you give an example of the kind of work that might entail? And I know you mentioned cloud, but it would seem to me that in a time like this, you know, the whole range of what you have should be beneficial with regards to selling to clients, I mean, network automation and some of the other factors also. So, could you maybe—

Shuky Sheffer (President and CEO)

So let me—

Ashwin Shirvaikar (Managing Director)

Yeah.

Shuky Sheffer (President and CEO)

Let me start with the second question because I forgot the first one. So, in most of our customers, it's talking about our big customers, and this is like T-Mobile, AT&T, Vodafone, and many others across the world. We are in the last several years started a very significant modernization programs. You need to think that our customer was spending both in building the new platforms. This is the new, most all of them are cloud platforms, with all the new capabilities of the Amdocs new platform, including some generative AI capabilities. Why? We continue to run for them in managed services, and both at the same time, we are doing development on the legacy platform that we are running for them.

By the way, this is in most of them, this is the system that are the core system today, because the modernization program are not, are just starting, and we are in the process of building the new platforms. So at the same time, we spend money because of both on the legacy platform enhancements and building the next generation platform, which is the future of all the operational platforms. Now, what we shared with you already last quarter, that given the headwinds that everyone is experiencing because of the macro environment and some of the headwinds that the industry is facing, they have done prioritization. So they want to double down on the modernization platform while reducing the spend on the legacy platform. So I hope this a bit clarify what we meant.

Tamar Rapaport-Dagim (CFO and COO)

With respect to the first question about the inorganic contribution, at the midpoint, it's roughly half coming from those recent acquisitions we talked about. So we feel that, looking in terms of the overall picture, on the one hand, we are very excited about our growth pillars. We talked about the cloud continuing to grow double digits. On the other hand, we do see some macro impact on this discretionary spending through enhancing legacy systems. But I think the important point is that our customers are modernizing and building the next generation stack with us. So that's really important factor as we're looking into the future, and we are continuing to see very good win rates with new customers joining us.

Ashwin Shirvaikar (Managing Director)

Got it. Okay, thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment, please. Our next question comes from the line of Tal Liani of Bank of America. Your line is open.

Tal Liani (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

Hi. I think it was me. I didn't hear the name. Two questions.

Operator (participant)

Mm-hmm.

Tal Liani (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

First. Hello, hello. Two questions. First, it, so cloud is at least 20% and growing at least 10%, so that means it contributes 2% to the growth. So if I take your guidance for next year, and I remove the cloud, it's between -1% to +3%. That's the growth for next year. So give us the historical perspective in times of slowdown, what happened to spending or what happens to Amdocs when customers reduce spending? How long down cycles kind of lasted, and, and just in general, what the—what did companies do, and what they didn't do during slowdowns?

Another kind of follow-up question on the same topic is, do you think that this one is different given that the strength was so strong, I mean, the cycle was so strong in the last two years, does it mean that maybe the slowdown is gonna linger a little bit more than historical? I'm just asking it because we see it in other areas. So that's my first question. My second question is quick, it's easy, it's about hedging. Can you tell us, given that there is a war in Israel, sometimes the currency kind of fluctuates, what's your hedging strategy? For how long do you do it, and what's typically the policy around it? Thanks.

Shuky Sheffer (President and CEO)

Let me try, start with the first question and then Tamar, we take the second one. Tal, I not necessarily agree to you mathematics. We grew over 7% last year, and you need to think that the cloud was part of the growth engine, a double digit beginning of this growth, because another also in 2023. Now, going to next year, when we talk about the impact of the 3%, and this is another phenomenon that I want to explain. The phenomenon is that when most of the legacy enhancement projects are part of, you know, it was like, I want to say like, it was almost business as usual.

I mean, we have large, large system that we, that we are having contact, we have teams in place, we're doing the projects, and the revenue was pretty much secure. When we have a headwind of 3% in this domain, you need to assume that to cut your spending happen very fast. So, when customers decide because of the pressure to prioritize modernization over a legacy, the cutting spending is almost instant. On the other hand, all the new programs, and there are many of them, and new wins that we won in actually last quarter and all the fiscal 2023, it takes time to ramp these projects up. I can give you one example.

We announced the U.K., it's a very significant managed services that we've signed last quarter. We are going, if I'm not correct, to start to recognize full revenue only towards the Q3 next year. And we won a many transformation program last year. We need to put the teams in place. We need to ramp up to go through the phases. So sometimes it can take us a quarter or two from the time that we win the project, until we start to ramp up and recognize revenue. So the phenomena, while the headwind of the legacy revenue is almost immediate, replacing this revenue takes some time when we build up.

This is why we also see that we see acceleration in sequential growth in half two, while we have all these ramp-up programs will be in place and all the wins that we've gone through last year. Regarding the cycle, I don't think we can predict right now. As you're right, we've gone through this cycle for many years. I don't think if we predict that this one will be longer than others. I can tell you another data point, that I believe that at some point our customer will have to continue to invest also in legacy, because right now this is their core system.

This is how they compete in the market, so you cannot completely dry out legacy, and at some point, if you want to compete, you need to invest. I think it's important point that I want to mention, but I'm not sure I can tell right now if this cycle is longer or not, because we've been in this cycle before, and I think at some point they will have to invest because the modernization program taking years. We're talking a very, very complex modernization programs that until all the subscriber will be migrated from the legacy platform to the new one, it will take years. So I don't think that they can keep the legacy system without investment, because this is the tools to compete right now.

Tal Liani (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

And, Shuky, on modernization programs—

Shuky Sheffer (President and CEO)

On the hedging?

Tal Liani (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

Sorry.

Shuky Sheffer (President and CEO)

Sorry.

Tal Liani (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

If you don't mind, before the hedging, if you don't mind, just to follow up on what Shuky said. If a modernization program starts, then the customer continues at the scheduled pace, what's the risk that they say, you know, with you need to migrate customers to modern systems, et cetera. What's the risk that this part slows down or that it's more challenging for customers to slow down modernization programs?

Shuky Sheffer (President and CEO)

We did not see any slowdown in modernization because, remember, when talking about modernization, the value for our customers, it's moving to the cloud, much more agent environment. As we mentioned already, all the new implementation of use cases for generative AI capabilities are targeted to new platform and not to the legacy platform. So if you want to get to this capabilities and to be able to successfully competing in the market with a very strong platform on the cloud, a very fast time to market, and many, many other things you need to modernize. We do not see any slowdown in modernization. If any, some customers saw acceleration.

Tamar Rapaport-Dagim (CFO and COO)

So just added on that point, drawing from past down scenarios, whether it was the financial crisis or even the midst of the COVID, we did not see any modernization project slow down. So just to back up, you know, what we are seeing right now is not surprising. In terms of—

Shuky Sheffer (President and CEO)

Did you get my point? Did you get my point, as I just mentioned, that, when you replace, sometimes when you replace legacy revenue, sometimes it takes some time to catch up?

Tal Liani (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

I fully understand it. Now I understand it, absolutely.

Shuky Sheffer (President and CEO)

Okay. Tamar?

Tamar Rapaport-Dagim (CFO and COO)

Regarding the currency, and then our hedging, in general, we are looking forward for hedging on an ongoing basis, so we're not waiting for a certain market opportunity as we want to protect the bottom line, which means practically in the near term, when we look, for example, on Q1 2024, or even on fiscal 2024 as a whole, we are already coming into the year, with pretty high coverage of our hedging. Yes, taking advantage of, of weakness of currency, as we've seen now in the Israeli Shekel, means we can improve the effective rate of our hedging for the latter part of 2024 and mainly for 2025, which of course, we are doing, as we speak.

Tal Liani (Managing Director and Technology Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Again, to ask a question, please press star one one. One moment, please. Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. Let's turn the call back over to Matt Smith for any closing remarks.

Matt Smith (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, operator, and thanks, everyone, for joining the call this evening. We do look forward to hearing from you very soon. And as always, if you do have any additional questions, just reach out to us here in the IR group. With that, have a great evening.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.