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Text: As the operator just mentioned, I'm Angie Park, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations.
We hope you've had an opportunity to review the news release we issued a short time ago.
Let me quickly outline the agenda for today's call.
Julie will begin with an overview of our results, KC will take you through the financial details, including the income statement and balance sheet along with some key operational metrics for the first quarter.
Julie will then provide a brief update on our market positioning, before KC provides our business outlook for the second quarter and full fiscal year 2022.
During our call today, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information for investors.
We include reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures where appropriate to GAAP in our news release or in the Investor Relations section of our website at accenture.com.
Our results again this quarter reflect how you are living our purpose every day to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity.
As more and more companies embrace compressed transformation, our clients are turning to us as their trusted partner as reflected in our outstanding growth of 27% this quarter.
We added 15 new Diamond clients, bringing the total to 244.
Diamond clients are our largest relationships and to give some context, we added 13 Diamonds in all of FY'21.
We also had record bookings of $16.8 billion, 30% growth year-over-year with 20 clients with bookings over $100 million, and we expanded operating margin 20 basis points in Q1, with adjusted earnings per share growth of 28%, while we continue to invest in our business and people, including $1.7 billion in acquisitions and in just the first quarter, we invested $215 million in learning for our people with 8.6 million training hours for approximately 14 hours per person.
The extraordinary demand we see in the market reflects the imperative of digital transformation.
Companies are making critical decisions about who will be their strategic partner and they are selecting us because of our talented people, our deep industry and technology capabilities and our commitment to both create value and need with value.
We predicted back in 2013 that every business would be a digital business and we have executed a clear strategy to rotate our business to anticipate and be ready to serve our clients.
And when the pandemic hit, we were ready with capabilities at scale reflected in 70% of our revenue at that time, being from digital cloud and security with strong relationships with the world's leading technology companies, which in some cases go back decades, with the focus on growing our people through learning, allowing us to rapidly reskill with an unwavering commitment to inclusion and diversity and the quality and caring for our people professionally and personally, making us a talent magnet in a tight labor market, adding 50,000 talented individuals in Q1.
And it is our breadth of capabilities across strategy and consulting, interactive technology and operations which is unique in our industry that allows us to work side-by-side with our clients to deliver results, and we believe our goal to create 360 degree value for our clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities is an essential part of our success.
Certainly, our commitment to creating a vibrant career paths for our people is an important part of this value and we just completed our annual promotion process.
I want to congratulate our 1,030 new promotes to Managing Director, 143 new appointments to Senior Managing Directors, and the more than 90,000 people we promoted around the world in Q1, overall.
Today, we launched our 360 Value Reporting Experience, a new way to show our progress and the value we create in all directions for all of our stakeholders.
More on that later.
KC, over to you.
We were very pleased with our overall results in the first quarter, which exceeded our expectations, setting a new bookings record at $16.8 billion with consulting bookings exceeding the previous record by more than $1 billion.
Our results reflected strong double-digit revenue growth across all dimensions of our business, our markets, services and industry groups, and we saw improved pricing in many parts of our business.
Based on the strength of our first quarter results and the demand we see in the market, we are significantly increasing our full year revenue and earnings per share outlook.
Now let me summarize a few of the highlights of the quarter.
Revenues grew 27% in local currency, increasing more than $3.2 billion over Q1 last year and more than $600 million above our guided range, with broad-based over delivery across all markets, services and industries, with all 13 industry groups growing double-digits.
We continue to extend our leadership position with growth we estimate to be more than 5 times the market, which refers to our basket of publicly traded companies.
Operating margin of 16.3% for the quarter, an increase -- with an increase of 20 basis points.
We continue to drive margin expansion, while making significant investments in our people and our business, including acquisitions.
We delivered very strong earnings per share of $2.78, up 20% over adjusted fiscal '21 results.
Finally, we delivered free cash flow of $349 million and returned $1.5 billion to shareholders through repurchases and dividends.
We also invested approximately $1.7 billion in acquisitions and we continue to expect to invest approximately $4 billion in acquisitions this fiscal year.
With those high-level comments, let me turn to some of the details, starting with new bookings.
New bookings were a record at $16.8 billion for the quarter, representing 30% growth in U.S. dollars and were $800 million higher than our previous record, with an overall book-to-bill of 1.1.
Consulting bookings were a record at $9.4 billion with a book-to-bill of 1.1.
Outsourcing bookings were $7.4 billion with a book-to-bill of 1.1.
We were very pleased with our bookings this quarter, which reflected 20 clients with bookings over $100 million.
All of our service dimensions, strategy consulting, technology services and operations, as well as our geographic markets delivered strong double-digit bookings growth in U.S. dollars.
Turning now to revenues.
Revenues for the quarter were $15 billion, a 27% increase in U.S. dollars and in local currency.
Consulting revenues for the quarter were $8.4 billion, up 33% in U.S. dollars and 32% in local currency.
Outsourcing revenues were $6.6 billion, up 21% in U.S. dollars and in local currency.
Taking a closer look at our service dimensions, strategy and consulting, technology services and operations, all grew very strong double-digit.
Turning to our geographic markets.
In North America, revenue growth was 26% in local currency, driven by double-digit growth in public service, software and platforms and consumer goods, retail and travel services.
In Europe, revenues grew 28% in local currency, led by double-digit growth in consumer goods, retail and travel services, industrial and banking and capital markets.
Looking closer to the countries, Europe was driven by double-digit growth in Germany, U.K., France and Italy.
In growth market, we delivered 30% revenue growth in local currency, driven by double-digit growth in consumer goods, retail and travel services, banking and capital markets and public service.
From a country perspective, growth markets was led by double-digit growth in Japan and Australia.
Moving down the income statement.
Gross margin for the quarter was 32.9%, compared with 33.1% for the same period last year.
Sales and marketing expense for the quarter was 9.7%, compared with 10.4% for the first quarter last year.
General and administrative expenses were 6.9%, compared to 6.6% for the same quarter last year.
Operating income was $2.4 billion in the first quarter, reflecting a 16.3% operating margin, up 20 basis points compared with Q1 last year.
Before I continue, as a reminder, we recognized an investment gain in Q1 last year, which impacted our tax rate and increased earnings per share by $0.15.
The following comparisons exclude these impacts and reflect adjusted results.
Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 24.4%, compared with an adjusted effective tax rate of 23.7% for the first quarter last year.
Diluted earnings per share were $2.78, compared with adjusted diluted earnings per share of $2.17 in the first quarter last year.
Days service outstanding were 42 days compared to 38 days last quarter and 38 days in the first quarter of last year.
Free cash flow for the quarter was $349 million, resulting from cash generated by operating activities of $531 million net of property and equipment additions of $182 million.
Our cash balance at November 30th was $5.6 billion, compared with $8.2 billion at August 31st.
With regards to our ongoing objective to return cash to shareholders.
In the first quarter, we repurchased or redeemed 2.4 million shares for $845 million at an average price of $346.19 per share.
At November 30th, we had approximately $5.6 billion of share repurchase authority remaining.
Also in November, we paid a quarterly cash dividend of $0.97 per share for a total of $613 million.
This represents a 10% increase over last year.
And our Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.97 per share to be paid on February 15th, a 10% increase over last year.
So in summary, we are very pleased with our Q1 results and we are off to a very strong start in FY'22.
Starting with the demand environment.
As we expected, across industries and the globe, technology continues to be the single biggest driver of change, accelerating, disrupting and creating new opportunities.
More companies are embracing compressed transformation, underpinned by cloud and digital and are moving to build their digital core and use technology to transform how they operate and to find new ways to compete and grow as you would expect for 27% revenue growth.
We are seeing broad-based demand across all markets, services and industries with double-digit growth across all our strategic growth priorities, including Applied Intelligence, Cloud, Industry X, Interactive Intelligent Operations, Intelligent Platform Services, Security and Transformational Change Management.
Let me bring this demand to life.
First, compressed transformation is occurring across the globe and the key enabler is the cloud, across the continuum from public to hybrid to increasingly the edge and the move to leading SaaS platforms, along with the convergence of cloud and data.
For example, we are working with a leading global supplier of tires and mobility solutions to migrate to the cloud, modernize its IT platforms, use data to accelerate growth and value and shift to a digital supply chain.
We created a state-of-the-art systems to track inventory, sales, warranty information and returns all in the cloud, all in real time, and have already helped to increase customer satisfaction 35% with improved cost optimization and increased revenue up next.
We're also helping Mount Sinai Health System, New York City's largest academic medical system transform, modernize, and increase it's resilience by migrating it's clinical systems, non-clinical systems and clinical data to a stable, secure cloud-based infrastructure to proactively detect and prevent threat, adapt the business and regulatory changes, together with the potential to save millions over the next five years.
Savings that can be reinvested to fund strategic innovative programs and help meet skilled team.
Our deep industry expertise is helping companies find new solutions and path to growth and helping their customers.
For example, we are collaborating with OPay, a leading Finnish Financial Group to use automation, advanced analytics and other emerging technologies to increase business agility, reduce cost and deliver enhanced customer and employee experiences.
OPay will adopt the intelligent automation platform Accenture myWizard to enable the company to extract greater value from its technology investment.
We are working with TUGA, a leading utilities provider in Germany to create and operate a game-changing meter-to-cash IT platform in the cloud.
It will help reduce operating cost by up to 40%, accelerate time to market and free up resources for energy transition and innovations like smart metering, helping customers make environmentally conscious decisions and energy providers stay responsive and reliable.
And as we talked about last quarter, our sustainability services are focused on helping our clients across industries move from commitment to action at scale.
We see these services as critical to our clients' agendas.
I'm pleased to announce that we have signed an agreement to acquire Zestgroup, a Dutch sustainability services company with a 140 employees that specializes in energy transition services and sourcing renewables and other clean energy sources.
We look forward to welcoming them -- welcoming them and working together to help clients move at speed to achieve net zero carbon.
We continue to help our clients to enter the next digital frontier of Industry X. We're excited to have completed the acquisition of umlaut and are seeing the power of our combination already.
Together we're working with the global technology leader to transform from a traditional engineering platform to a more agile, model based engineering platform to use the simulation and analysis from design and development, all the way through the product life cycle.
We are also working with an American wireless operator to help improve daily operations and transform their network security by combining our deep security risk assessment and communications industry skills.
Of course, growth is at the heart of every clients agenda and Interactive is helping our clients capture new growth with their customers with our unique combination of creativity, technology, data, AI and industry expertise.
For example, we are applying our digital global capabilities to help Capri Holdings Limited, a global fashion, luxury group consisting of the iconic brands Versace, Jimmy Choo and Michael Kors translate its rich in-store luxury shopping experience to a digital experience that aligns with shifting customer behaviors and accelerate sustainable growth.
As a strategic partner with Volkswagen Group, a German motor vehicle manufacturer, we're helping Audi and VW to pave the way for sustainable growth to precise continuous commerce and rich experiences along the entire car buying -- car buying journey.
We are combining the power of AI and predictive analytics to deliver the right experiences at the right time to accelerate revenue growth through an expanded digital commerce ecosystem.
We're also working with VLI, a Brazilian logistics solutions company and Trato [Phonetic] its new platform business to provide a digital one-stop shop for self-employed truckers to enhance their growth to improve logistics by offering options from our profitable freight product as well as to provide them access to critical services such as insurance, loans and healthcare, all by combining [Indecipherable] analytics and AI.
We see an increasing demand to create the platforms that power the digital products and experiences our clients seek for their customers.
We're helping CLO [Phonetic] a leader in electronic payments in Latin America, become more competitive by migrating to the cloud, which will accelerate new product development and enable cutting-edge technology.
This will make it easier to launch innovative products, reduce time to market by two thirds and lower costs, all while enhancing their customers' experience.
And of course, security is critical to all our clients.
We were proud to be selected by the Department of Homeland Security Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA in the U.S., Americas risk advisor defending against today's threats with advanced cyber services to help the Department of Homeland Security protect federal, civilian, executive branch system against cyber attacks like ransomware [Indecipherable] and malware campaigns.
Even as companies undergo compressed transformation, exponential technology changes continue.
We are investing to anticipate the future and we are working with our clients to innovate and take advantage of emerging technologies to compete and win.
Our R&D is powered by central labs and ventures and extends across every part of our business so that we can quickly translate research into real results for our clients.
For example, we are working with ESPN to explore how emerging technologies can enable new ways for fans to experience sports at the ESPN edge innovation center, leveraging the years of early investments we have made an extended reality.
We've been a key participant in shaping the innovation in enterprise, blockchain technologies across the globe with applications and financial markets, supply chain and digital identity, which now are creating value for our clients.
From partnering with the Digital Dollar Foundation to explore a U.S. Central Bank digital currency, to working with Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited to build a new integrated settlement platform using digital asset modeling language smart contract.
And while the metaverse [Phonetic] has recently burst into the public eye, we've been an early innovator implying the technology.
In fact, we often innovate on cutting-edge technologies by deploying them at Accenture first.
We are proud to have the largest enterprise Medivirs [Phonetic] through what we call the nth four and are deploying over 60,000 virtual reality headsets and have created one Accenture Park, a virtual campus for on-boarding and immersive learning, including meeting rooms and collaborative experiences.
Our VR environments provide our people with a human connection and learning experiences in an immersive digital world.
We are also working with clients to help explore and shape their early forays into the metaverse through new digital experiences enabled by virtual reality and responding to their interest in new products enabled by NFT or non-fungible tokens in new ways to conduct commerce as the metaverse take shape.
Many of these client examples reflect our goal to create 360 degree value.
This goal reflects our growth strategy, our purpose, our core values and our culture of shared success.
It is also how we operate Accenture and we measure our success by how well we are achieving this goal for all our stakeholders.
And today we are proud to present our new 360 Degree Value Reporting Experience, a new way to share our progress, which is available on our website.
With this comprehensive digital tool you will find all our reporting and data in one place, measuring how we're doing.
We've expanded our ESG reporting with three additional ESG framework, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board SASB, the task force on climate related financial disclosure TCFD, and the World Economic Forum International Business Council WEF, IBC metrics, while continuing to report against the Global Reporting Initiative GRI standards, the UNGC 10 principles and the Carbon Disclosure Project CDP, because we believe the transparency builds trust and helps us all make more progress.
Back to you, KC.
Now let me turn to our business outlook.
For the second quarter of fiscal '22, we expect revenues to be in the range of $14.3 billion to $14.75 billion.
This assumes the impact of FX will be about negative 4% compared to the second quarter of fiscal '21 and reflects an estimated 22% to 26% growth in local currencies.
For the full fiscal year '22 based on how the rates have been trending over the last few weeks, we now expect the impact of FX on our results in U.S. dollars will be approximately negative 3% compared to fiscal '21.
For the full fiscal '22, we now expect our revenue to be in the range of 19% to 22% growth in local currency over fiscal '21, which continues to assume an inorganic contribution of 5%.
For operating margin, we continue to expect fiscal year '22 to be 15.2% to 15.4%, a 10 basis point to 30 basis point expansion over fiscal '21 results.
We continue to expect our annual effective tax rate to be in the range of 23% to 25%.
This compares to an adjusted effective tax rate of 23.1% in fiscal '21.
For earnings per share, we now expect our full year diluted earnings per share for fiscal '22 to be in the range of $10.33 to $10.60 or 17% to 20% growth over adjusted fiscal '21 results.
For the full fiscal '22, we now expect operating -- operating cash flow to be in the range of $8.4 billion to $8.9 billion, property and equipment additions to be approximately $700 million and free cash flow to be in the range of $7.7 billion to $8.2 billion.
Our free cash flow guidance continues to reflect a very strong free cash flow to net income ratio of 1.1 to 1.2.
Finally, we continue to expect to return at least $6.3 billion through dividends and share repurchases as we remain committed to returning a substantial portion of cash to our shareholders.
I would ask that you each keep to one question and a follow-up to allow as many participants as possible to ask questions.
Operator, would you provide instructions for those on the call.

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q1 earnings per share $2.78.
q1 revenue rose 27 percent to $15 billion.

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