EuroBusiness Media (EBM): Teleperformance, the world’s leading provider of outsourced CRM and contact center services reports results for 2013. Paulo César Salles Vasques, welcome. You are the CEO of Teleperformance. To begin, what are your comments on your 2013 results?
Paulo César Salles Vasques: 2013 was a record year for Teleperformance. We grew above the market; we grew at 7.9% with an EBITA of 9.3%, in line with the guidance that we gave to the market in the beginning of 2013.
EBM: What are your comments on the growth dynamic in your different geographical zones?
Paulo César Salles Vasques: We had two big engines of growth in the group. One was the English speaking world and the second one was the Latin American world. English speaking world - the US domestic and Philippines - and the Latin American worlds - notably Brazil, Mexico, Portugal and Columbia. We had very impressive growth in those countries. Regarding Europe, we came back to growth in Europe, so I would say Greece, Italy, the Netherlands were very good examples of the growth that we had in Europe.
EBM: You recently invested in new call centres and multilingual hubs in Europe, specifically. How do you see them contributing to future growth and margins?
Paulo César Salles Vasques: I think it’s a very innovative approach and very convenient to our clients. And by clients I mean our people and our actual clients. Why? Because we operate the multi-lingual Euro hubs for small and mid-size programmes that operate in Europe, concentrating in one location the whole European operation. And we bring native speaking people to our operations, we provide them facilities, we provide them training, entertainment, inspiration, so it’s very convenient for them and convenient for our clients. Moreover, we use these multilingual Euro hubs to put our Customer Experience Lab, because of the facility of those multiple languages, we can concentrate in one location experiences and surveys that we do with our clients and customers - trends regarding our customers, how they are perceiving the market, how they are communicating with their clients, with their brands and so on.
EBM: Willingness to outsource call centers varies widely from country to country and from industry to industry. In what regions or sectors are you witnessing new growth opportunities?
Paulo César Salles Vasques: First of all, this sector is only 26% outsourced. That means that we have still 74% of the overall market to go. So that’s huge. People say the market is very saturated, very fragmented. Actually that’s true, but there is a big, an immense field in front of us. We are investing a lot in 3 to 4 sectors. First is Healthcare in the USA for obvious reasons. Second, I would say, there is the BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance), that is starting to pick up in some regions. The third one is the retail market. There is a big, big opportunity for retail and the government sector as well.
EBM: One of your competitors just made a major acquisition; another one is planning an IPO. What is your acquisition strategy going forward and what are your views on the evolution of your competitive environment?
Paulo César Salles Vasques: What I can say about the competitive environment is that the more competitive and professional it is, the better for Teleperformance, for the clients and for the people that work in this environment. So this is the first topic. The second topic is that we are super demanding with ourselves, so we are not moving according to the flow. We move by ourselves, we raise the bar for ourselves.
The second point is that we are always looking for gems. Why didn’t we acquire companies in those past two years? Because we did not find the proper gem. Are we looking for acquisitions? For sure. We are a debt free company; we have money to do it. And I really hope that is going to happen in 2014.
EBM: What will be your policy on return of cash to shareholders?
Paulo César Salles Vasques: In the past four years we went from 21% to a 35% pay-out that we are going to propose at the next general assembly. I think it’s a good ratio and it gives a lot of means for Teleperformance to accomplish the short-term intentions - that is to pay back the money for the shareholders - with the long-term strategy of Teleperformance.
EBM: And finally, what is your guidance and outlook for 2014?
Paulo César Salles Vasques: We really expect to continue to grow in 2014. So we are expecting to have growth between 5 to 7% like-for-like of the net revenue and between 9.5% and 9.7% of the EBITA margin.
EBM: Paulo César Salles Vasques, CEO of Teleperformance, thank you very much.
Paulo César Salles Vasques: Thank you very much, it was a pleasure.
