HCL Tech – Strong growth outlook, Motilal Oswal

We organised an interactive session with HCL Technologies Ltd.’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. C Vijayakumar, to discuss the operational aspect, the overall demand outlook of IT services and any incremental parameters that are emerging through macros. Here are the key insights from the discussion.

• The business outlook remains similar to Q3, with healthy demand across industries. The deal pattern has shifted more toward cost optimisation and efficiency, while vendor consolidation has become a predominant theme among large clients.
• The clients are committed to the programs they are pursuing at this moment; however, they have become more cautious and inquisitive in terms of the quantum of investments and return on investment that are expected to be generated through new program initiations.
• The overall pipeline remains strong, with the share of large deals increasing. The number of small deals has increased from existing clients on the work application modernization and analytics.
• The deal mix has further inched toward vendor consolidation and efficiency-led opportunity over growth transformation. The demand is definitely higher than it was during Q3.
• HCL Tech has not witnessed any pause or project holdback, and the clients are even confident to run the core program, irrespective of the macro situation.
• There is a common theme across clients ‘to do more with less’. They are more comfortable doing offshoring, which is a prominent trend in big tech companies given the structural slowdown in their business operations.

Bloomberg