Accenture Ltd. (ACN)
Q2 2009 Earnings Call Transcript
March 26, 2009, 4:30 p.m. ET

Executives

Richard Clark - Managing Director, Investor Relations
William D. Green - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Pamela J. Craig – Chief Financial Officer
Stephen J. Rohleder – Chief Operating Officer

Analysts

Tien-Tsin Huang - JPMorgan
Jason Kupferberg - UBS
Rod Bourgeois – Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
Tim Fox - Deutsche Bank
George Price – Stifel, Nicolaus & Co.
Bryan Keane - Credit Suisse
Julio Quinteros - Goldman Sachs & Co.
Ira Sawyer – Wachovia Capital Markets

Presentation

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Accenture''s second quarter fiscal 2009 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. You will have an opportunity to ask questions after the presentation. You may queue up to ask questions at any time by pressing “*” then “1” on your touchtone phone. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing the “#” key. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. If you should need assistance during the call, please press “*” then “0” and you will be assisted offline by an operator. As a reminder, this call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, the Managing Director of Investor Relations, Mr. Richard Clark; please go ahead.

Richard Clark

Thank you, operator, and thanks, everyone for joining us today on our second quarter fiscal 2009 earnings announcement. As the operator just mentioned, I am Richard Clark, Managing Director of Investor Relations. With me this afternoon are Bill Green, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Pamela Craig, our Chief Financial Officer; and Steve Rohleder, our Chief Operating Officer.

We hope you have had an opportunity to review the news release we issued a short time ago. Let me quickly outline the agenda for today’s call. Bill will begin with an overview of our results, Pam will take you through the financial details including the income statement and balance sheet, and Steve will add some operational perspective. Pam will then provide our business outlook for the third quarter and full fiscal year 2009 and Bill will close the presentation before we take questions.

As a reminder, when we discuss revenues during today’s call, we are talking about revenues before reimbursements or net revenues. Some of the matters we will discuss in this call are forward-looking and you should 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 general economic conditions and those factors set forth in today’s news release and disclosed under the Risk Factors section of our Annual Report on Form 10-K and other SEC filings.

During our call today, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information for investors. You can find reconciliation of those measures to GAAP on the Investor Relations section of our website at Accenture.com. As always, Accenture assumes no obligation to update the information presented on this conference call.

Now, let me turn the call over to Bill.

William D. Green

Thank you, Richard, and thanks everyone for joining us today. Let me start by stating the obvious. I think you would all agree that the economic environment around the world has become even more complex and uncertain over the past few months. We are going to discuss our results today in that context. We want to share with you what we are seeing, how we are acting and reacting in the face of it. With that backdrop Accenture''s second quarter was a solid one. We grew revenues in local currency, expanded operating margin, and gained market share.

Given the global economic environment, its impact on business in general, and its devastating impact on some of our clients, we performed well. We have done this by getting and staying closer than ever to our clients, helping them adapt to very challenging circumstances and by quickly aligning Accenture to the new business realities.

We remain confident in our business. Our intense focus and discipline in managing Accenture has enabled us to execute well and to deliver solid profitability and strong flow. And while our revenue growth has slowed, we gained profitable market share, which we believe is a true indicator of our success.

Here are few highlights from the quarter. Revenues were $5.3 billion, an increase of 3% in local currency. This was slightly below our guided range but we believe very respectable given the dramatic changes in the market and challenges for business that began in January.