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  • CMP : 1,870.0 Chg : 19.0 (1.03%)
  • Target : 4,375.0 (16.98%)
  • Target Period : 12-18 Month

22 Jul 2022

Healthy fresh order intake

About The Stock

Coforge offers system integration, apps & BPO services to BFSI, travel & healthcare verticals.

  • Revenues grew at 18.1% CAGR in the past five years
  • Healthy OCF, EBITDA (~75%) and robust return ratios (RoCE > 20%)
Q1FY23 Results

Coforge reported decent Q1FY23 results

  • Dollar revenues increased 2.7% QoQ (4.7% QoQ CC growth)
  • EBITDA margin declined by 294 bps QoQ to 16%
  • Increased revenue guidance to at least 20% CC revenue growth in FY23
What should Investors do?

Coforge’s share price has grown by ~6.9x over the past five years (from ~₹ 544 in July 2017 to ~₹ 3740 levels in July 2022).

  • We maintain our BUY rating on the stock
Target Price and Valuation

We value Coforge at ₹ 4375 i.e. 25x P/E on FY24E EPS

Key Triggers for future price performance
  • Increase in deal size; signed a US$105 mn BFS deal (for four years), insurance US$20 million (three years) & healthy order book to drive growth
  • Bottoming out of travel vertical (in US), preferred partnership with Fortune 500 insurance & Tier 1 banking companies, recent acquisition and aggressive hiring to drive 19.1% revenue CAGR over FY22-24E
  • 120 bps improvement in margins over FY22-24E due to offshoring, higher fresher additions and utilisation improvement
Alternate Stock Idea

Apart from Coforge, in our IT coverage we also like LTI.

  • LTI and Mindtree to create a large entity of US$3.5 bn revenue through merger. The combined entity will enjoy scale benefit, large order wins etc
  • HOLD with a target price of ₹ 4,480

Key Financial Summary

Particulars FY19 FY20 FY21 FY22 5 Year CAGR(FY17-FY22) FY23E FY24E 2 Year CAGR (FY22-FY24E)
Net Sales 3,676.2 4,183.9 4,662.8 6,432.0 18.1 7,972.1 9,122.5 19.1
EBITDA 645.2 719.8 786.5 1,115.4 18.1 1,522.7 1,778.9 26.3
EBITDA Margins (%) 17.6 17.2 16.9 17.3 - 19.1 19.5 -
Net Profit 403.3 444.1 455.6 661.8 12.7 918.3 1,087.4 28.2
EPS (|) 65.7 71.4 73.3 106.5 - 147.8 175.0 -
P/E 56.9 52.4 51.0 35.1 - 25.3 21.4 -
RoNW (%) 19.5 18.5 18.5 24.2 - 28.4 28.3 -
RoCE (%) 25.2 23.0 23.3 25.6 - 31.5 31.8 -
Source: Company, ICICI Direct Research

Key takeaways of recent quarter & conference call highlights

  •               US$ revenues grew 2.7% QoQ to US$238.7 million (4.7% QoQ growth in CC) while rupee revenues grew 5% QoQ to | 1,829.4 crore. Geography wise, the revenue growth for the quarter was driven by America region, which reported 5.6% QoQ growth while EMEA region reported 4.8% QoQ decline.

 

  • Vertical wise, BFS & Others reported strong revenue growth of 9.4% & 8.5% QoQ respectively while Insurance & Transportation were laggards with decline in revenue of 7.7% & 0.9% QoQ respectively. Revenue from Top 5 customers increased by 1.82% QoQ while that of Top 10 customers increased by 4.18%. Clients with revenue above US$10 mn & revenue between US$5-10 mn increased by 4 each on YoY basis

 

  • The company is also indicated that in case of any macro headwinds in the future, only ADM service line vulnerable to any tech spend cut, while they do not foresee any major impact on the other service lines

 

  • The margins for the quarter were down by ~300bps QoQ impacted by I) wage hike (-250bps) impact and increase in SG&A expenses (-100bps) impact. The company indicated that margins are expected to recover 150 to 200bps in the subsequent quarter. Key margin levers are i) continued focus on offshoring revenue as revenue mix in offshoring has increased from 40.1% in Q1FY22 to 48% in Q1FY23 ii) Fresher’s added in FY22 are expected to become billable in subsequent quarters iii) utilisation improvement

 

  • The company upgraded its guidance from 20% CC revenue growth in FY23 to at least 20% CC revenue growth in FY23. The company also maintained its EBITDA margin guidance at 18.5%-19%. The company mentioned that its guidance on both revenues and margins fully factored in any weakness on global macros and subsequent moderation of tech spending, if any. The company also mentioned that it has given higher salary hike this year while it does not foresee any abrupt increase in attrition in the foreseeable future

 

  • The company indicated that BFS growth continued to be strong on account of healthy deal wins in the previous quarters. The company had won a large US$105mn deal in Q1FY22, to be delivered over 4 years, While the scope of work includes all of its core transformation capabilities across Enterprise Architecture, Industry consulting, Data architecture, Cloud engineering, Digital integration and Intelligent automation. It was followed by another US$50mn deal in Q4 in BFS space. On insurance side, the growth was muted for the quarter due to one client specific issue and the company mentioned that Insurance vertical is expected to recover in Q2

 

  • Management indicated that Travel vertical has recovered from the pandemic related issues and revenues in this segment already crossed pre-pandemic revenue numbers. It also said that muted numbers for this vertical in this quarter should be looked in the context of strong 15.2% QoQ growth in the base quarter. The company says that cloud transformation, incremental use of contact less technology at the airports and automation are some of the key spending areas in this vertical.

 

  • The company indicated that minority interest for the quarter has increased because of improving profitability at the SLK global. The company also mentioned that profitability at SLK global has been improving because company’s focus on the automation which is also reflection of headcount reduction.
 
 
Variance Analysis
 
   Q1FY23   Q1FY23E   Q1FY22   YoY (%)   Q4FY22   QoQ (%)  Comments
 Revenue in USD           238.7          239.4        199.7 19.5        232.4 2.7 Revenue increased by 4.7% QoQ in CC terms 
Revenue 1,829.4 1,848.0 1,461.6 25.2 1,742.9 5.0  
Employee expenses 1,273.9 1,256.6 1,025.0 24.3 1,162.0 9.6  
               
Gross Margin 555.5 591.3 436.6 27.2 580.9 -4.4  
Gross margin (%) 30.4 32.0 29.9 49 bps 33.3 -296 bps  
SG&A expenses 263.7 277.2 226.2 16.6 251.6 4.8  
               
EBITDA 291.8 314.2 210.4 38.7 329.3 -11.4  
EBITDA Margin (%) 16.0 17.0 14.4 156 bps 18.9 -294 bps Margin were down by ~300bps QoQ impacted by I) wage hike (-250bps) impact and increase in SG&A expenses (-100bps) impact
Depreciation & amortisation 63.0 64.7 52.4 20.2 58.4 7.9  
EBIT 228.8 249.5 158.0 44.8 270.9 -15.5  
EBIT Margin (%) 12.5 13.5 10.8 170 bps 15.5 -304 bps  
Other income (less interest) -7.6 5.0 5.2 -246.2 -11.9 -36.1  
PBT 221.2 254.5 163.2 35.5 259.0 -14.6  
Tax paid 49.3 38.2 32.0 54.1 34.2 44.2  
PAT 149.7 199.3 123.6 21.1 207.7 -27.9  

Disclaimer

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