WNS - Earnings Call - Q4 2025

Executive Summary

• WNS delivered sequential growth and margin expansion in Q4 FY2025: Revenue $336.3M (+1.0% q/q, -0.2% y/y) and net revenue (“revenue less repair payments”) $323.3M (+1.3% q/q, -0.8% y/y); adjusted operating margin rose to 21.4% (from 19.3% in Q3).
• Results beat S&P Global consensus: revenue $336.3M vs $323.6M est.* and adjusted EPS $1.45 vs $1.41 est.*, aided by broad-based demand, productivity and FX tailwinds; GAAP profit also benefited from a $12.2M facility sale in India.
• FY2026 guidance: net revenue (rev less repair) $1,352–$1,404M (+7–11% y/y), ANI $199–$211M, adjusted EPS $4.43–$4.70 on ~44.9M diluted shares; includes ~2% revenue from Kipi.ai; capex up to $65M; ~90% revenue visibility at midpoint.
• Catalysts: signing two large multi‑year transformational deals (BFSI, corporate travel), Kipi.ai acquisition (600+ Snowflake-certified staff) to accelerate data/AI; near-term watch items include seasonally soft Q1 margin cadence (17–17.5%) before sequential improvement through FY2026.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Sequential growth resumed with margin expansion: constant-currency net revenue +2.6% q/q and adjusted operating margin >200 bps expansion; “generated strong free cash flow” (CEO).
  • Strategic execution: closed two large transformational deals (BFSI risk ops and corporate travel operations); expect revenue contribution beginning H1 FY2026.
  • Capability upgrade: acquired Kipi.ai to deepen data, analytics and AI; 600+ employees and extensive Snowflake talent pool enhance differentiation (CEO).

• What Went Wrong

  • Top-line y/y softness persisted: Q4 revenue -0.2% y/y and net revenue -0.8% y/y, reflecting a large healthcare client loss, lower online travel volumes, and FX headwinds.
  • Elevated attrition: global attrition rose to 39% (vs 32% in Q3), though management framed entry-level churn as manageable.
  • Near-term margin headwind: Q1 FY2026 adjusted operating margin expected at 17–17.5% given seasonal productivity/wage increases and ramp costs, then improving through the year.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, and welcome to the WNS Holdings' Fiscal 2025 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions for how to ask a question will follow at that time. As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. Now, I would like to turn the call over to David Mackey, WNS's Executive Vice President of Finance and Head of Investor Relations. David?

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, and welcome to our Fiscal 2025 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Earnings Call. With me today on the call, I have WNS's CEO, Keshav Murugesh, and WNS's CFO, Arijit Sen. A press release detailing our financial results was issued earlier today. This release is also available on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.wns.com. Today's remarks will focus on the results for the Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Full Year ended March 31, 2025. Some of the matters that will be discussed on today's call are forward-looking. Please keep in mind that these forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors set forth in the company's Form 20-F.

This document is also available on the company website. During this call, management will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures which we believe provide useful information for investors. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP results can be found in the press release issued earlier today. Some of the non-GAAP financial measures management will discuss are defined as follows: Net revenue is defined as revenue less repair payments. Adjusted operating margin is defined as operating margin excluding amortization of intangible assets, share-based compensation, acquisition-related expenses or benefits, and impairment of goodwill and intangible assets. We are also excluding costs related to our ADF program termination and costs associated with the transition to voluntarily reporting on U.S. domestic issuer funds.

Adjusted net income, or ANI, is defined as profit excluding amortization of intangible assets, share-based compensation, acquisition-related expenses or benefits, goodwill and intangible asset impairment, ADF program termination costs, the transition to voluntarily reporting on U.S. domestic issuer funds, and all associated taxes. These terms will be used throughout today's call. I would now like to turn the call over to WNS's CEO, Keshav Murugesh. Keshav?

Keshav Murugesh (CEO)

Hey, thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. I'm delighted with this quarter's results. In the fiscal fourth quarter, WNS financial results were highlighted by solid sequential revenue growth, operating margin expansion, and strong free cash flow. The company posted net revenue of $323.3 million, representing a sequential increase of 1.3% on a reported basis and 2.6% on a constant currency basis. During the quarter, healthy demand for digitally led business transformation and cost reduction initiatives more than offset the impact of unfavorable currency movements. In Q4, WNS added nine new logos and expanded 50 existing relationships. In addition, we are excited to report that during the quarter, the company closed two large transformational deals, one each in the banking and financial services area, as well as another in the travel vertical. We expect these engagements to begin generating revenue in the first half of fiscal 2026.

On March 11, we announced the acquisition of Kipi.ai, a leading provider of data management services focused on the Snowflake platform. Kipi brings to WNS strategy, execution, and managed service capabilities across data engineering, advanced analytics, AI, as well as data science. Their more than 600 global employees represent one of the world's largest Snowflake certified talent pools and will significantly enhance WNS's positioning in the rapidly growing and mission-critical data management space. Kipi has built more than 250 accelerators, enablers, and solutions that allow clients to quickly leverage their data to improve decision-making and drive business outcomes at scale. Their capabilities are highly complementary to WNS's existing offerings, and we believe Kipi's seasoned leadership team, talented resources, and strong delivery approach represent an excellent cultural fit for us.

Together, we will combine domain, digital, data, and AI to create new services and solutions, add new clients, and expand the scope of our existing relationships. During WNS's 25-plus year history, the company has developed intimate knowledge of industry-specific operations, processes, workflows, and systems. This foundational business understanding is at the core of everything we do and puts WNS in a unique position to help clients harness and analyze data and leverage state-of-the-art technologies, including AI, generative AI, and agentic AI. Our organic and inorganic investments over the past several years have been focused on strengthening and combining our capabilities across these three pillars for long-term success. Just under a year ago, we hired a Chief Business Officer to oversee WNS Next, our umbrella organization covering AI, data and analytics, and technology and automation.

We have also now added a new Chief AI Research Officer, a Chief Product and Design Officer, and an EVP of Digital Strategy. These experts are leading their respective teams and helping WNS navigate the rapidly evolving technology and services landscape. In addition, our tuck-in M&A strategy has increased the breadth and depth of our technology and AI-led capabilities with the acquisitions of Wuram, SmartCube, OptiBuy, and now Kipi.ai. Together, these investments are helping us accelerate the creation and deployment of WNS proprietary technology assets, including products, platforms, tools, enablers, and accelerators that are reusable and customizable. These digital assets, which now embed AI, GenAI, and agentic AI, are being combined with WNS's global talent to deliver productized services for our clients.

By creating solutions at the intersection of domain expertise, data, and technology, WNS is now able to understand industry problems well, create transformational AI-led solutions, and deliver differentiated outcomes. I would now like to provide you with a brief recap of the past year before turning our attention to fiscal 2026. From a financial perspective, fiscal 2025 was a challenging year for WNS, driven by customer-specific revenue headwinds, including a large healthcare client loss, the delivery transition from onsite to offshore for an internet-based procurement relationship, and volume-based ramp-downs in the online travel space. Full year net revenue came in at $1,266 million, down 1.5% on a reported basis and down 1.7% on a constant currency basis. The revenue decline resulted in lower expense coverage, which adversely impacted our adjusted operating margin.

Despite this pressure, WNS continued to invest in accelerating capabilities and building organizational depth, including a 16% increase in our sales force during the fiscal year. From a profitability standpoint, WNS was able to offset the revenue and margin pressure with non-recurring benefits from the reversal of a tax liability in the second quarter and the sale of a facility in India in the fourth quarter. Together, these two items contributed approximately $21 million to adjusted net income and $0.46 to adjusted EPS. In fiscal 2025, WNS generated strong free cash flow and deployed our capital in a balanced, disciplined manner, including aggressive share repurchases, capability-based Tucking M&A, and scheduled debt repayments. Other highlights from this past year include our transition from IFRS to U.S. GAAP reporting and WNS's inclusion in the Russell 2000, as well as the MSCI U.S. small Cap indices, which help improve access to capital, trading liquidity, and company visibility.

As we enter fiscal 2026, we are excited about the company's solid business momentum, healthy pipeline, differentiated capabilities, and expanding market opportunity. In fiscal 2025, we added 33 new logos and expanded 179 existing relationships, representing healthy increases over the previous year. We also completed our acquisition of Kipi.ai in the high-growth data management space, and we have closed two large deals in the fourth quarter alone. WNS has now posted two consecutive quarters of sequential top-line growth, and the three customer-specific revenue headwinds mentioned earlier are now largely behind us. Today, demand for services that deliver business transformation and cost reduction remains stable and healthy despite the volatile macro environment. Our pipeline is broad-based across verticals and services and maintains a healthy balance between traditional deals and large transformational opportunities.

Clients continue to move forward with decisions, as evidenced by our recent large deal signings and now the new logo additions as well. While we must be vigilant for potential changes in client behavior in the coming months as well as quarters, we are encouraged by the fact that our business model remains fundamentally defensive and recurring in nature. WNS begins fiscal 2026 with 90% visibility to the midpoint of our revenue guidance, which represents 9% growth on both a reported as well as constant currency basis. The guidance midpoint for ANI assumes stable year-over-year adjusted operating margins despite increased investments and growth in adjusted EPS of more than 11%, excluding one-time benefits in fiscal 2025.

In summary, by using our industry-focused operational knowledge to unlock the power of data and state-of-the-art technologies like AI, GenAI, and agentic AI, WNS is well-positioned to meet our clients' rapidly evolving requirements, deliver impactful business outcomes, and drive long-term sustainable shareholder value. I would now like to turn the call over to our CFO, Arijit Sen, to discuss further our results as well as outlook. Arijit?

Arijit Sen (CFO)

Thank you, Keshav. In the fiscal fourth quarter, WNS's net revenue came in at $323.3 million, down 0.8% on a reported basis from $325.9 million last year and up 0.1% on a constant currency basis. Year-over-year, revenue was adversely impacted by a loss of a large healthcare client in Q2 of 2025, reductions in travel volumes, and unfavorable currency movements. Sequentially, net revenue increased by 1.3% on a reported basis and 2.6% constant currency. The quarter-over-quarter revenue growth was driven by broad-based demand for AI-led transformation, automation, and cost reduction solutions, which more than offset reduced revenue with large utilities clients resulting from the Q3 completion of a platform migration project and unfavorable currency movements. In Q4, WNS recorded $1.3 million of short-term high-margin revenue. Adjusted operating margin in Q4 was 21.4% as compared to 20.9% last year and 19.3% last quarter.

Year-over-year, adjusted operating margin improvements were driven by favorable currency movements and were partially offset by increased investments in infrastructure and sales. Sequentially, margin improvement was driven by operating leverage and high volumes, improved productivity, and favorable currency movements. The company's net other income/expense was $16.9 million of net income in the fourth quarter as compared to $0.8 million of net income in Q4 of fiscal 2024 and $0.9 million of net expense last quarter. Year-over-year, the favorable variance is the result of $16.7 million from the sale of a facility in India. Sequentially, the favorable variance is the result of the facility sale, reduced interest expense driven by debt repayments, and increased interest income on higher cash balances. WNS's effective tax rate for Q4 came in at 23.2% as compared to 21.7% last year and 22.8% in the prior quarter.

Both year-over-year and sequentially, the tax rate increase was driven by changes in a geographical profit mix and the percentage of work delivered from tax-incentive facilities. The company's adjusted net income for Q4 was $66.2 million compared with $53.9 million in the same quarter of fiscal 2024 and $47 million last quarter. Adjusted diluted earnings were $1.45 per share in Q4, up from $1.12 in the fourth quarter of last year and up from $1.04 last quarter. As of March 31, 2025, WNS's balances in cash and investments totaled $267.4 million, and the company had $243.5 million in debt. In the fourth quarter, we generated $53.4 million of cash from operating activities, paid $63.4 million for an acquisition of Kipi.ai, incurred $18.6 million in capital expenditures, and made debt repayments of $33 million.

DSO in the fourth quarter came in at 34 days as compared to 33 days reported in Q4 of last year and 34 days last quarter. With respect to other key operating metrics, WNS's total headcount at the end of fourth quarter was 64,505, and attrition rate was 39% as compared to 33% reported in Q4 of last year and 32% in the previous quarter. We expect attrition to average in the low to mid 30% range, but the rate could remain volatile quarter over quarter. Bill seat capacity at the end of Q4 was 42,494, and WNS averaged 72% work from office during the quarter. I would like to provide you with a brief financial summary for fiscal 2025 before discussing our outlook for the coming year. Net revenue for fiscal year came in at $1,266 million, down 1.5% on a reported basis and down 1.7% on constant currency.

Revenue growth during the year was driven by healthy new logo additions and existing client expansion that was overshadowed by the three client-specific revenue headwinds Keshav mentioned earlier. The company's fiscal 2025 adjusted operating margin was 19.5%, down 110 basis points versus fiscal 2024. Margin favorability from currency movements and improved productivity was more than offset by increased investments and reduced operating leverage on low revenue. Net interest income expense for the year improved by $11.7 million and was driven by our India facility sale of $16.7 million in Q4. This benefit was partially offset by reduced interest income on lower average cash balances and increased interest expense on higher average debt levels. The company's effective tax rate was 19.9%, up from 18.3% last year, but below normalized levels due to a $8.6 million non-recurring tax benefit in Q2.

Full year adjusted net income came in at $208.7 million, down 4% year-on-year, while adjusted EPS came in at $4.55, representing an increase of 3%. WNS's average share count reduced by 7% as a result of our aggressive share repurchase in the first half of the year. Our fiscal 2025 profitability was favorably impacted by $21 million or $0.46 per share as a result of non-recurring benefits, including a tax liability reversal in Q2 and our facility sale in India in Q4. In fiscal 2025, WNS generated $207.2 million in cash from operations, spent $54.1 million on capital expenditures, made debt repayments of $174 million, and incurred $63.4 million for acquisitions. The company also repurchased 2.8 million shares of stock at a total cost of $149.7 million or $53.46 per share.

Our disciplined balance approach to capital allocation resulted in WNS ending the year with a net cash balance of $24 million. The company's global attrition rate for the year was 35%, and work from office increased to 72% as compared to 68% last year. In our press release issued earlier today, WNS provided our initial full year guidance for fiscal 2026. Based on the company's current visibility levels, we expect net revenue to be in the range of $1.352 billion-$1.404 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 7%-11% on both reported and constant currency basis. We currently have 90% visibility to the midpoint of the range, which assumes an average British pound to US dollar exchange rate of 1.29 for the full year. Guidance includes our acquisition of Kipi.ai, which is expected to contribute approximately 2% revenue and be neutral to adjusted EPS.

Fiscal 2026 revenue projections assume a year-over-year headwind of approximately 2% related to fiscal 2025 rundowns with the healthcare client and online travel volumes and do not include any revenue contribution from unsigned large deals or improvements in discretionary project spending. WNS's full year adjusted net income for fiscal 2026 is expected to be in the range of $199 million-$211 million based on an 87 rupee to a US dollar exchange. This implies adjusted EPS of $4.43-$4.70 based on a diluted share count of approximately 44.9 million shares. As Keshav mentioned, excluding the $0.49 of one-time benefits in fiscal 2025, the midpoint of guidance represents an increase of more than 11% in adjusted EPS. With respect to capital expenditures, WNS currently expects our requirements for fiscal 2026 to be up to $65 million. We will now open the call for questions. Operator.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question at this time, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press star one one again. In the interest of time and to enable everyone on the call to participate, please limit your queries to one question and one follow-up. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Brian Bergen of TD Cowen. Your line is now open.

Brian Bergen (Analyst)

Hi, guys. Good morning. Good afternoon. Thank you. I wanted to start on client demand. First off, good to hear the two large deals that were signed in the fourth quarter. I know those have been a long time coming for you. Aside from those, can you just talk about broader client sentiment, what you've been seeing around signing, engagement ramps, and spending behavior, particularly since the end of March?

Keshav Murugesh (CEO)

Yeah, Brian, so thanks for that question. Interestingly, while there is a bit of uncertainty in the minds of a number of clients, essentially around where the macros are, what are the kind of pronouncements and announcements coming on tariff wars, as well as reactions of different countries, which could impact each of these companies' supply chains or different elements of their business. What we are seeing is a consistent theme coming to the fore, which is nobody wants to wait now anymore in terms of their digital transformation kind of journeys. More importantly, everyone is quite clear about the fact that their cost reduction and cost leadership programs must anyway happen along with it. As you can see, we have actually been able to accelerate closures. In fact, some of the closures we were able to finish earlier than what we had anticipated before.

Some of the large deals that we announced during this quarter, we originally thought would actually take a little longer to close. The advantage of this now means that we actually get full year's revenue coming in on some of these deals, both large as well as small. Actually, what we see is enhanced activity from clients, clients being cautiously optimistic, taking calls in terms of cost reduction and digital kind of disruption. From our perspective, as long as there is no paralysis, that augurs very well for our business model for the long term.

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

I think just to Keshav's point, Brian, when you look at the roughly 90% of our business that is transformation, automation, cost reduction, where we're actually managing operations for our clients, the reality is that's a strategic decision on the client's part. If they've made that decision that they need to find a partner to accelerate that journey, the fact that we save them money at the same time is never going to be an issue in a weak environment. I certainly would not go as far as to say that our business is countercyclical, but the reality is that 90% of our business is and does continue to have a very low macro correlation.

Where we have to watch for potential volatility would be on the 10% of our business that's project-based, which at this point remains fairly stable, and to see if there are any potential impacts down the road to the volumes.

Brian Bergen (Analyst)

Okay. Makes sense. That's clear. If we kind of dissect the 2026 growth outlook, so 7%-11% reported in constant currency with two points in organic, can you give us a sense just on the other puts and takes as it relates to things like productivity commitments, client ramp-downs, the large deal assumption, just kind of the build-up to that, the kind of the gross versus net growth dynamic?

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Sure. I think overall, Brian, we're kind of back to a more normalized environment. I think the headwinds that we're looking at for the year relative to client ramp-downs, productivity improvements, and projects, the projects that are rolling off, right, we're still looking in that 10%-11% range for that piece of the business. The other piece that Arijit called out in his prepared remarks is we do have a 2% annualized impact from the large healthcare ramp-down and from the ramp-down that occurred throughout the year in the OTA space. Those two items will create an additional 2% headwind in fiscal 2026, but our growth algorithm in the 9% at the midpoint is inclusive of roughly a 13% overall headwind in the business.

Brian Bergen (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Brian.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Mayank Tandon of Needham. Your line is now open.

Mayank Tandon (Analyst)

Thank you. Dave, maybe just to extend Brian's question there, could you talk about the cadence of growth through the fiscal 2026 in terms of the organic trends versus the M&A contribution? Would that be pretty evenly split? Also, same question on the margin front, how we should think about the cadence of margins as the year progresses.

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Yeah. Look, I think we're kind of back from a cadence perspective line to normal numbers, right? The reality is the acquisition took place about mid-month in March, so we should have a full quarter's worth of contribution in fiscal Q1. In terms of the cadence of the business, I think both Keshav and Arijit talked about the fact that excluding the healthcare ramp-down, which was in fiscal Q2 of 2025, we've now put up three quarters in a row of 3% sequential growth in the business on a constant currency basis. We enter the fiscal year with good momentum. Obviously, as you're all aware, Q1 is typically seasonally soft for us on the revenue side.

Because we give our productivity improvements in Q1, the expectation walking into the year, similar to as always, is that we're going to be flat, slightly up in Q1, but it's always kind of a softer quarter because of that 3-4% productivity headwind that we have embedded in that. Similarly, from the margin perspective, Q1 is going to be soft for us because we give the productivity headwinds in Q1 on the revenue side, we give the wage increases on the cost side, and we're also going to have the ramp of these two large deals that are going to be hitting us in Q1 and into Q2.

Our expectation at this point is that we're going to be somewhere in the 17-17.5% operating margin for Q1, but to see that number sequentially improve as we move throughout the year, and as both Arijit and Keshav mentioned, looking at at this point in time with our aggressive investments, flattish operating margin at that 19.5% level for the full year.

Keshav Murugesh (CEO)

Yeah. Just to add, Mike, if you look at it from an overall year perspective, Dave mentioned, if you look at. We are seeing margin expansion H2. Of course, as our revenue visibility increases and we start tracking our projections, we also expect the overall margins to also improve. In a similar manner that we told this year, when we had this year as well, you would have seen our margins expanded in Q4 as well. We expect a similar trajectory to also happen. As of right now, like Dave mentioned, we are looking at similar operating margins for fiscal 2026 versus 2025 due to reasons Dave mentioned.

Mayank Tandon (Analyst)

Got it. Just to maybe delve into the two large deals, are you able to quantify the impact and maybe discuss the type of services you're providing? To that extent, are there more large deals in the pipeline that you could potentially close in fiscal 2026?

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Yeah. Look, I think, Mayank, we've been consistent in our large deal definition, right, that these are at a minimum $10 million in annual contract value. We're still going through the process of kind of finalizing the ramp-up here, and we've been hopefully conservative in terms of their contribution relative to fiscal 2026. We are actively ramping these deals at this point in time, so it's not a, "Let's hope this is going to happen." We're not going to be getting a full year's worth of revenue from either of these deals at this point. One we expect to be fully ramped, hopefully by Q2. The other should be ramping as we move through the first half of the year. Obviously, those deals will be a function of both the timing of the ramp and the overall size we have not disclosed.

In terms of the type of work that's being done, as Keshav mentioned, one of the deals is in the banking and financial services space. It's work for one of the world's largest payment platforms, and we're going to be doing risk operations, enhanced due diligence for them, user operations, and technical payment processing. On the travel side, which is the second large deal, this is in the corporate travel management space, and it's going to be operations and fulfillment in addition to online bookings for them. Both of these deals are kind of in core, middle office for these companies and focused on things that are mission-critical for running their businesses.

Keshav Murugesh (CEO)

Yeah. Just to add to a second part of your question, look, the pipeline going forward is also very healthy. We had a similar pipeline last quarter as well, and the pipeline continues. We are seeing some fairly late-stage conversations in three or four clients. As we mentioned in our remarks a couple of quarters back, from a guidance perspective, we will only include deals just signed. While we are optimistic about getting some of these closed in a couple of quarters, once we sign them, we'll put them in the guidance. The pipeline is healthy. There are some active conversations, and the conversations are multiple levels, including some of them are sold to us as well.

Mayank Tandon (Analyst)

That's great to hear. Congrats on the quarter. Thank you.

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Mayank.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Surinder Thind of Jefferies LLC. Your line is now open.

Surinder Thind (SVP and Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. Just following up on the large deals, are there any characteristics that we should be aware of in terms of maybe the duration of the contracts, expectations around productivity improvement, or just more broadly with the newer contracts that you're signing? Just any color that you can provide there with clients' anticipation of your integration of AI and the productivity expectations.

Keshav Murugesh (CEO)

Yeah. I think that's a great question. I think the key is all of these large deal transactions help move us away from the traditional models that this industry normally operates in with clients and positions us significantly away in a higher value area away from traditional BPM. That's the first thing I would like to say because now what's coming to the fore is not just our superior knowledge of business domains and subdomains, but also our great understanding of technology, analytics, digital transformation, our partnerships that we did not speak about earlier, but that we have now created across all the large players, whether it is around cloud, whether it's around technology, whether it's around agentic, whatever.

All of this comes together, which means the quality of conversation with these clients now moves from a TCO, from just a simple cost-saving model to much more a TCO-oriented kind of a model where we're actually walking in, telling our clients that, "Here's what they normally spend in a particular area." We take out large components of that area, keeping certain parts which are unique to them inside, and then delivering all of that at a particular price point. That allows the company, the client on the one hand, to save money, to be far more efficient, and to see the impact of some of the technology tools that we bring to the fore. From our point of view, it builds a very strong relationship with the client. It creates what I call a black box approach with each of these clients.

It allows us to work on models that can, over a period of time, dramatically change margin profile. More importantly, we always start with one area, but these large deals always have a path towards new processes and new areas. For example, the travel company that we spoke about or the banking platform company that we spoke about, these are very large players globally. We may have started with one area, but we have already scoped out the next two or three areas that we will go after, which potentially, over a couple of years, could position all of these clients as, I think, in the top 5, top 10 because of this unique approach. This is the approach that we are taking to not just the large clients, but also other traditional bread-and-butter smaller clients where we believe the potential for creating a large deal is available.

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

I would just add to Keshav's comments, Surinder, that both of these deals are 5-plus years in duration. Kind of following that, when you're doing transformation, it's going to take a long time for the client to get comfortable. As a result, these deals typically don't have one, two, three-year kinds of life. Both of these are five-year-plus deals. The other thing that's interesting that we're seeing kind of across the portfolio is that the productivity commitments that we have to give to clients are a function of what they're ready to do and what they're willing to let us do on the front end. If a client is willing to let us deploy AI, GenAI, agentic AI as part of the upfront solution, then the productivity commitments over a five, six-year period tend to actually be a little bit less.

If the client is moving forward with us in today's model with an understanding that over the next four to five years, we're going to be deploying more and better technology, the productivity improvements tend to be going up a little bit. Overall, I would say when we look at the profile of the deals we're signing, it's mixed, but overall, the productivity commitments at the company level are very similar to where they've been.

Surinder Thind (SVP and Equity Research Analyst)

That's actually quite helpful. In terms of just maybe following up on some earlier commentary in the prepared remarks, when we think about client behavior, I think it makes sense that you probably would not see a material change given the focus and the types of works that you guys do. You also talked a little bit about assuming no improvement in discretionary spend. Now, should you be assuming some degradation, or is it just truly we're too early in this, what I would call, period of uncertainty for clients to actually be changing behavior or for you to be seeing any change in behavior? Is it a timing issue at this point, or is it clients truly just aren't changing behavior with respect to your line of work?

Arijit Sen (CFO)

Look, let me try to turn that. Look, the core business that Dave mentioned earlier is basically the business called technology business, right, which is mission-critical for clients. Of course, there, we do not expect to see too many changes because we feel a lot of that business is actually matinee too. As demand for cost takeout increases, we actually expect that sort of business to be on similar levels. To your point on the discretionary expenditure, look, it is a difficult one. At this point in time, if you recall, we have said our visibility of guidance is 90% to midpoint. That is in historical precedent that you see is where we sort of look where we were typically at the Q1 of each year. At this point in time, we are not making any improvements or degradations.

We are assuming that that part of the business continues in line with our core business. Given that with the acquisitions of Kipi.ai and The SmartCube and Wuram, given the fact that our project-based revenue has increased in percentage from where we were historically, any improvement in the macros or the discretionary expenditure will actually help us improve our revenue output.

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Yeah. I think to Arijit's point, we believe we've largely de-risked this based on the visibility that we've provided here. The reality is, on top of that, Surinder, that if you look at the project work that we do, and obviously, it's discretionary in nature. The client has to write a check upfront and then get the benefits over time, right? If you look at the primary driver for our discretionary projects, whether that's procurement, whether that's automation, whether that's analytics, these projects all have a cost-reduction theme to them, right? The only difference is, as opposed to getting the savings day one, the client has to write a check first and then get the savings over time.

While we do believe that these projects could get deprioritized because they do drive cost savings and they are critical to clients, we believe that they're not going to drop that far in the prioritization. In fact, if you look at project-based revenues and the revenues that we've gotten from our acquisitions, those numbers were relatively stable even in fiscal 2025.

Surinder Thind (SVP and Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Puneet Jain of JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Puneet Jain (Analyst)

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. There's been some sensitivity to travel volume in the past with the macro environment. With how things where they are right now as it relates to macro outlook, what does the guidance bake in for travel volume? How low some of those contracts are to possibly the minimum level of commitments from those clients?

Arijit Sen (CFO)

Let me start, actually, Puneet. It's a great question. I fully understand where you are coming from as far as the question is concerned in terms of the macros. I'll let you in on a little secret. One of the biggest pipelines that we have really now is in the travel and the shipping and logistics space, which is a little counterintuitive because you would expect with all that is being spoken about, those are likely to get impacted the most. Some of the wins that we have had in this last year, the pipeline that we have now built, the decisions that we are seeing are all very much focused on these areas, which means all of them are preparing for potential changes in their business model.

Everyone seems to be very focused now on the cost leadership mantra, right, which actually plays in extremely well from our point of view because many of them also seem to be first-time outsourcers. Particularly in the corporate travel space, many of them have never actually done any of these programs. With that having being said, I'll ask Dave and Arijit to give you a little more color on the minimums and such.

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Sure. Let me take some of that, Puneet. Look, I think we've been very consistent in explaining to you guys that the challenges that we've had in the travel space have really been because in certain areas, we operate at the intersection of a volatile segment, right, in terms of travel, a volatile service offering in terms of CX, and a volatile business model in terms of digital, right? Where we've seen this impact in our business over the last couple of years and where there's been this pressure, it's primarily been in the OTA space. It has not been in airline operations. It has not been in hotels because what we're doing there is more middle or back office focused. If you look at the OTA space and you look at where we were in Q4, online travel was down to 3% of company revenue.

We have not baked in improvements in those numbers in fiscal 2026. Certainly, if we add new logos, that'll help. Certainly, if we can help these clients move from traditional models to AI, agentic AI-led models, then that has upside for us. At this point in time, we really feel that the online travel volumes for us are bumping along the bottom here. There really is very limited downside risk, especially because the fact that that 3% is spread over seven or eight different customers, right? We do not have a client concentration risk on top of the fact that we do not have a major business risk in this segment.

Arijit Sen (CFO)

To add further color, Keshav mentioned that our pipeline travel is very robust. If you look at some of the deals that we are talking about, a lot of those deals are actually in different areas like corporate travel and management, etc., which further sort of diversifies our portfolio from being OTA and airline historically to more OTA, airline, and corporate travel and management. We feel that would also help us de-risk any macro sort of sensitivity around this business and gives us more depth and scale in the kind of work we do because each of these deals is large, they're complex, they are sort of, and they are really sort of integral to the client operation, right? That is the way we are also trying to de-risk the macro impact on the travel portfolio.

Puneet Jain (Analyst)

Got it. Got it. No, thanks for that. For the utilities client, where you had some headwind, can you talk more about the nature of that headwind, what drove that, and also what percentage of your overall revenue stems from such platform-based services?

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Overall, I mean, this is a platform migration, right? This would be part of what we report as technology services across the company. We don't do tons of this work, but certainly, if we've got clients that are looking for help here, we're happy to do that. We help this large client migrate their platform from an asset that they were using externally to one that they purchased. Now we're continuing to manage that process on the new platform. Given our domain expertise, given our process expertise, we were the right partner for them to help do that platform migration. The challenge was that it created a little bit of a bump for us in revenue in fiscal Q2 and Q3. Once that platform migration was successfully completed, obviously, that revenue stream fell off. It remains a very healthy, happy client for us.

Obviously, when you look at our segment reporting and you look at our business, right, you'll see this hit the utilities vertical. You'll see this hit the CX revenues. You'll see us hit the largest client in terms of customer concentration. You'll see us hit the U.K. revenue. As that kind of rips through the segment, that's where you see the impacts to the business from Q3 to Q4.

Arijit Sen (CFO)

Puneet, just some added commentary. I would not call this a headwind, right? Dave mentioned why the revenues in Q2 and Q3 are up. If you exclude those, you will see over the last six quarters, the numbers have broadly been stable. The volumes are there. Because we did some incremental work, it seems to be a headwind, but the underlying volume work continues. We have great relationships with the client across the CXOs and the board level. At this point, we have no cause of concern in terms of client.

Puneet Jain (Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Arijit Sen (CFO)

Thanks, Puneet.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Robbie Bamberger of Baird. Your line is now open.

Robert Bamberger (VP and Senior Equity Research Associate)

Yeah. Thanks for taking my question. Employees were up 2% sequentially and then accelerated to 7% in fiscal Q4. Can you maybe talk about your hiring plans and should we think of this as essentially a ramp before revenue acceleration in fiscal 2026? Any color on geographies you're ramping in?

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Yeah. That's exactly right, Robbie. I mean, if you look at the headcount additions in fiscal Q4, this is the ramp for these large deals that are ramping in Q1 and Q2. Obviously, part of the reason we've got that margin pressure in Q1 and bleeding into Q2 a little bit is because we've hired in advance of actually getting the full revenue contribution from these deals. You see that impact in Q1. Yes, a lot of what you've seen in terms of the re-acceleration in hiring in Q4 is about we kind of ate through the excess capacity in the organization in Q2 and Q3 as revenue rebounded. Now we're hiring for future growth.

Keshav Murugesh (CEO)

Sorry, just a little additional commentary there as well. The Q4 headcount also includes the impact of the acquisition of Kipi.ai, where we had about 600-plus coin-outs in March. That is why the numbers might look a little skewed. Like Dave said, the bulk of this is towards hiring for the planned ramps and the revenue growth starting Q1 off. I think the headline news, as both the gentlemen have said, is that growth is back. We are hiring. We are getting people ready to deliver on our priorities.

At the same time, I also want to mention that in terms of quality, we're also hiring lots more people onshore in our client-facing locations, salespeople, more digital kind of people, more technology people, all of whom, and more leaders who are actually facing off with end clients because we actually think that next year is going to be super exciting for us. It is not just a case of hiring people who are delivering to these processes, but it is also hiring high-quality resources who are now facing off with clients and leading these conversations around domain, digital, technology, transformation, and analytics.

Robert Bamberger (VP and Senior Equity Research Associate)

Yeah. Very helpful. Thank you. Maybe just turning to GenAI, any way to put color on how many clients are currently using GenAI with you? Are you able to leverage those GenAI assets across multiple different clients? Maybe thinking about the makeshift of contracts, should it move more towards fixed-based or transaction-based contracts as GenAI comes on?

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Let me take that, Robbie. I think to date, we've deployed GenAI solutions at around 20 of our clients. Most of the work that we've done there is, and Keshav spoke a little bit about this in his prepared remarks, reusable components that we've created and packaging those reusable components to feature GenAI as part of productized services, right? We create a technology asset, a digital asset. It leverages AI, GenAI, agentic AI. What we do is we wrap services around that product, around that platform so that we can create differentiated experiences for our customers. We've actually been successful in deploying these assets with about 20 customers at this point in time. We do see good demand for these assets. I think we will continue to see that progress as we move throughout fiscal 2026.

The expectation is that the contribution in revenue as we move throughout the year from AI, GenAI, agentic AI will continue to increase.

Keshav Murugesh (CEO)

That's the reason why earlier I also spoke about the fact that we have built very strong partnerships now with some of the technology providers on the other side, particularly around agentic AI and some of these specific areas that will help us continue to be a very smart company. Thirty-one use cases across 20 clients that Dave spoke about, 13 digital assets fully developed at this point in time, strong partnerships created, but more importantly, sending out a very strong signal to prospects and clients that we are ready to help them when they are.

Surinder Thind (SVP and Equity Research Analyst)

Yep. Very helpful. Thank you.

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Vincent Caliccio of Barrington Research. Your line is now open.

Vincent Alexander Colicchio (Research Analyst)

Yeah. Another question on AI. Keshav, I think last year you come up with a number for what portion of revenue will be tied to AI. Would you like to take a stab at that kind of a number for 2026?

Keshav Murugesh (CEO)

Oh, that's a great question. At this point in time, it is about 5%, close to 5% of our revenue from these models. I think what we will expect is it will increase, it'll inch upwards. At this point in time, we're not in a position to give you a specific number. I think this is a question that we can keep asking across the quarters.

Vincent Alexander Colicchio (Research Analyst)

To what extent is access to skilled labor on the AI side limiting your growth there?

Keshav Murugesh (CEO)

Not at all. Like I mentioned earlier, all the new leadership positions are actually based out of the markets, right? Around them, our ability, look, we do not need large armies of people to do this. We need focused small teams who can come in and help us manage. If you look at it, some of it is coming in through our organic growth and acquisition of talent onshore as well as offshore. Some of it is coming through acquisition, smart acquisition like Kipi.ai that we just did. I mean, 600 people coming in just from that one acquisition is how we are managing it.

At this point in time, while we are very well set and well prepared in terms of leading our customers down this path, we also think there will be a time frame for clients, particularly the traditional clients, to move away from the old models that they're used to, some of these new models to leverage these areas. Therefore, we will have enough access to talent. We will have enough opportunity to upskill, reskill existing talent. We will have enough opportunity to lead in terms of some of these areas.

Vincent Alexander Colicchio (Research Analyst)

Thanks for that. Just one more. What caused the spike in attrition? Is there anything meaningful to see there?

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Nothing specific, Vince. I mean, all the attrition was once again focused at the entry level in the organization. We've got strong ability to manage that. Actually, there's a certain amount of attrition at that level that's healthy to running our business and maintaining our cost structure. Nothing that we're concerned about, nothing that we believe is a trend. That number just tends to jump around quarter to quarter.

Keshav Murugesh (CEO)

Yeah. I think at a high level, I'd also say that when growth is back at an industry level, one should also expect some of these things to happen.

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Yeah. Absolutely.

Vincent Alexander Colicchio (Research Analyst)

Thanks, guys.

David Mackey (EVP of Finance and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Vince.

Operator (participant)

At this time, we have no further questions in the queue. This will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.