Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Accenture's Q3 fiscal 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. If you would like to ask a question, please press one, then zero on your telephone keypad. You will hear acknowledgment that your line has been placed in queue. You may remove yourself from the queue by repeating the one zero command. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Angie Park, Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator, and thanks everyone for joining us today on our Q3 fiscal 2022 earnings announcement. As the operator just mentioned, I'm Angie Park, Managing Director, Head of Investor Relations. On today's call, you'll hear from Julie Sweet, our Chair and Chief Executive Officer, and KC McClure, our Chief Financial Officer. 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 Q3. Julie will then provide a brief update on our market positioning before KC provides our business outlook for the Q4 and full FY 2022. We will then take your questions before Julie provides a wrap-up at the end of the call. Some of the matters we'll discuss on this call, including our business outlook, are forward-looking and et cetera, subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, those factors set forth in today's news release and discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in this call. 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 the news release or in 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 Julie. Thank you, Angie. Thank you everyone for joining. Thank you to our 710,000 people around the globe for their extraordinary work and commitment to our clients, which resulted in delivering another very strong quarter of financial results and creating significant 360-degree value beyond our financials for all our stakeholders. Here are a few highlights of the 360-degree value we created this quarter. Starting with our people, we continued to invest in their skills, and they completed 10.6 million training hours, which averages to 16 hours per person this quarter. We are incredibly pleased to be recognized as a top 10 Great Place to Work for 2022 in countries representing 76% of our people. Argentina, Brazil, France, India, Japan, Mexico, the Philippines, U.K., and the United States. Specifically, on the US list, we are particularly proud that Accenture jumped 38 spots in one year to rank number six. Overall, this is the 14th consecutive year that Accenture has been recognized by Great Place to Work. Also of particular note, in India, not only were we ranked number 10 by Great Place to Work, Business Today recognized Accenture in India as number four of the best companies to work for, marking our 11th consecutive year on the list. All these recognitions reflect a tangible demonstration of our commitment to our people. The strong demand for our people and services and trust from our clients are once again seen in our strong bookings of $17 billion, which represents 15% growth in local currency. Compressed transformation continues, with another 18 clients with bookings over $100 million, bringing the total year to date to 74, which is 20 more than the same time last year. We had revenue growth of 27% in local currency, continuing to take significant market share, growing nearly 3x the market, while delivering margin expansion of 10 basis points. Our ongoing investment in our communities was reflected this quarter in how we are leveraging our expertise in digital learning and collaboration, partnering with UNICEF's Generation Unlimited on the new Passport to Earning platform program to equip 10 million young people ages 15 to 24 with digital skills across 10 countries to prepare them for work. This program went live this quarter in India, the first and largest country of the 10. As always, we are staying close to our clients and our ecosystem partners to help them succeed today and to anticipate the needs of the future. Our very strong financial results this quarter reinforce the trust our clients and partners have in our ability to do so. Over to you, KC. Thank you, Julie. Thanks to all of you for taking the time to join us on today's call. We delivered very strong overall results in the Q3, reflecting very strong double-digit revenue growth across all dimensions of our business, as well as continued operating margin expansion as we continue to invest at scale in our business and our people. We continue to lead the industry with these results, demonstrating the relevance of our services and our trusted client and ecosystem partnerships. We continue to deliver on our shareholder value proposition, including both our financial results and creating 360-degree value for all our stakeholders. Let me summarize a few of the highlights of the quarter across our three financial imperatives. Revenues grew 27% in local currency and were above the top end of our guided range, driven once again by broad-based over delivery across all markets, services, and industries, with all 13 industries growing double digits. We once again extended our leadership position, adding an incremental $9 billion in revenues year to date, with growth estimated to be nearly 3x the market, which refers to our basket of publicly traded companies. Operating margin of 16.1% for the quarter was an increase of 10 basis points. We continue to drive margin expansion while making significant investments in our people and our business. We delivered EPS of $2.79, which represents 16% growth over fiscal 2021 results and includes $0.15 or 6% negative impact related to the disposition of our business in Russia. Finally, we delivered free cash flow of $2.9 billion and returned $1.6 billion to shareholders through repurchases and dividends. We have made investments of $2.2 billion in acquisitions, primarily attributed to 27 transactions year to date. We now expect to invest about $2.5 billion in acquisitions this year, with another $1 billion that we expect to close in Q1 given required regulatory approvals. With that, let me turn to some of the details. New bookings were $17 billion for the quarter and overall book-to-bill of uncertain. Consulting bookings were $9.1 billion, with a book-to-bill of one. Outsourcing bookings were $7.8 billion, with a book-to-bill of 1.1. We were very pleased with our bookings this quarter, which represent our second-highest ever and were aligned to our expectations. Our bookings reflect 15% growth in local currency and 18 clients with bookings over $100 million. Looking forward, we continue to have a strong pipeline. Turning now to revenues. Revenues for the quarter were $16.2 billion, a 22% increase in USD and 27% local currency, reflecting a foreign exchange headwind of 5% compared to the 4% headwind provided in our business outlook last quarter. Adjusting for the actual foreign exchange impact, we were $160 million above our guided range. Consulting revenues for the quarter were $9 billion, up 24% in USD and 30% in local currency. Outsourcing revenues were $7.1 billion, up 19% in USD and 23% in local currency. Taking a closer look at our service dimensions, strategy and consulting and technology services both grew very strong double digits, and operations grew strong double digits. Turning to our geographic markets. In North America, revenue growth was 23% local currency, driven by double-digit growth in consumer goods, retail and travel services, public service, software and platforms, and communications and media. In Europe, revenues grew 30% local currency, led by double-digit growth in industrial, consumer goods, retail and travel services, and banking and capital markets. Looking closer at the countries, Europe was driven by double-digit growth in Germany, the U.K., France and Italy. In growth markets, 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 33.2% for the same period last year. Sales and marketing expense for the quarter was 10.3%, compared with 10.6% for the Q3 last year. General and administrative expense was 6.5%, compared to 6.6% for the same quarter last year. Operating income was $2.6 billion in the Q3, reflecting a 16.1% operating margin, up 10 basis points compared with Q3 last year. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 27.1%, compared with an effective tax rate of 25% for the Q3 last year. Diluted earnings per share were $2.79, including a $0.15 or 6% negative impact related to the disposition of our business in Russia, compared with diluted EPS of $2.40 in the Q3 last year. DSO were 44 days, compared to 41 days last quarter and 36 days in the Q3 of last year. Free cash flow for the quarter was $2.9 billion, resulting from cash generated by operating activities of $3.1 billion, net of property and equipment additions of $195 million. Our cash balance at May 31st was $6.7 billion, compared with $8.2 billion at August 31st. With regards to our ongoing objective to return cash to shareholders, in the Q3, we repurchased or redeemed 3.1 million shares for $972 million at an average price of $313.43 per share. As of May 31st, we had approximately $3.7 billion of share repurchase authority remaining. Also in May, we paid a quarterly cash dividend of $0.97 per share for a total of $614 million. This represents a 10% increase over last year. Our board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.97 per share to be paid on August 15th, a 10% increase over last year. Finally, turning to the 360-degree value we are creating for all our stakeholders. We were very pleased to be ranked number 13 on 3BL Media's 100 Best Corporate Citizens in the United States report, which recognizes outstanding ESG transparency and performance against the Russell 1000, which are the largest companies in the U.S. equity market. For more information on the 360-degree value we are creating, go to Accenture's 360-degree value reporting experience, which reflects new information each quarter. In summary, we are extremely pleased with our results to date and are now very focused on Q4 and closing out another very strong year. Now let me turn it back to Julie. Thank you, KC. As we shared at our recent investor and analyst day, we believe there are five forces that our clients must harness over the next decade that in turn will drive our growth. Total enterprise reinvention, talent, sustainability, the Metaverse Continuum, and the ongoing tech revolution. Today, we continue to see strong demand across our markets, services and industries, which is being driven primarily by two of these five forces. Total enterprise reinvention, which involves transformation of every part of every business, leveraging technology with new ways of working and engaging with customers and employees, and new opportunities for growth and talent, which requires every business to be able to access talent, be a talent creator, not just a talent consumer, and to unlock the potential of their people. Compressed transformation continues, with our clients seeking to execute bold programs in accelerated time frames, often spanning multiple parts of the enterprise at the same time, when in the past they may have taken a more sequential approach. This desire for speed with strong execution is driving our growth as clients partner with us because of the breadth and depth of our capabilities, the insights that come from our scale, global footprint and our deep functional industry and cross-industry expertise. They partner with us because they trust us and because we are trusted partners with the technology ecosystem, which are also critical to our clients' transformations. While the current macroeconomic environment affects industries and markets differently, the common theme across our clients is that all strategies, whether for growth, cost or resilience, lead to technology, particularly cloud data and AI, and our clients turn to us to be able to effectively use technology to achieve their goals. Let me bring this demand environment to life. We help our clients execute total enterprise reinvention by helping them build their digital core, optimize operations and accelerate growth. Cloud data and AI are fundamental to a strong digital core. We are working with The Clorox Company, a leading multinational manufacturer and marketer of home care, household and health and beauty products for consumers, as well as products and technologies for professional customers. The company is undertaking a broad digital transformation that will touch every aspect of the enterprise. We will help the company modernize business processes, streamline their operating model, leverage advanced data and analytic insights, and establish a future-ready technology foundation to deliver new levels of customer and consumer experiences, accelerate go-to-market activities, and enable a more agile and resilient supply chain, so they can lead and shape the consumer goods industry. We are helping New Look, a global fashion retailer, migrate its existing e-commerce platform to the cloud and strengthen its technology foundation to enable a seamless experience across stores, online, mobile and social media. AI and machine learning will create greater efficiency, increase sales, and provide the flexibility to scale for growth and overcome industry disruption. The company is committed to infusing sustainability into their transformation roadmap, using innovation as an accelerator toward their own 2040 sustainability targets, all of which promises to keep the company in step with the store of the future, the speed of the fashion industry, and the demands of their stakeholders. As we build the digital cores of our clients, security is more important than ever. Our integrated capabilities, from identity to threat intelligence to managed security services to incident response, are critical as our clients respond to increasing risks and expand their digital footprint. We are helping a large healthcare services provider assess their cybersecurity and business resilience levels. With much of their growth coming through mergers and acquisitions, technology and security have become more challenging to manage with multiple security providers, data centers and environments. We help design a cloud strategy and secure their backups in the cloud with an end-to-end cybersecurity approach that will provide flexibility as they continue to acquire more companies. We are also providing a managed security service from cyber resilience to threat intelligence to monitor their infrastructure and their security products, improving their ability to protect against future attacks. Our clients value our unique combination of capabilities from strategy and consulting to technology to managed services because it enables us to deliver holistic solutions and expands their access to digital talent. We are helping Infroneer Holdings, a Japan-based infrastructure construction services company, digitally transform operations in finance and HR through a data-driven approach. Through our managed services capabilities and our SynOps platform, we will help the company shift to intelligent operations by standardizing and automating key business processes, driving efficiency and productivity, reducing operating costs, and providing greater opportunity for their people to focus on high value and strategic growth areas such as business design and digital experience. Shifting to the next digital frontier in the enterprise, our Industry X capabilities are digitizing engineering and manufacturing to reimagine the products our clients make and how they make them, and to build a greater resiliency, productivity, and sustainability. We are partnering with a German multinational corporate manufacturer of luxury vehicles to develop an in-car software platform that will power the central intelligence unit for personalized driver interaction, information, convenience functions, and entertainment. The platform provides a continuous flow of customer data to the automaker, enabling it to enhance vehicle functionality and create the superior customer experience that the automaker is renowned for. We are helping Albras, the largest producer of primary aluminum in Brazil, to increase its productivity, energy efficiency, and minimize greenhouse gas emissions by creating a new smelter control system operated over a new IoT architecture that utilizes cloud platforms for data storage and machine learning. Data insights will enable better visibility of gas emissions around the clock, allowing operations to be proactively managed, leading to increased energy efficiency and operational safety, as well as additional sustainability strategies to reduce their carbon footprint. Sustainability, one of the five forces shaping the next decade, continues to be a growing priority area for our clients, and they value our ability to help them achieve their sustainability goals as part of their larger transformations, such as the Albras example, and directly as part of sustainability-focused engagements, such as the work we are doing for Pos Malaysia Berhad, the national operator running Malaysia's largest post and parcel delivery network. We are helping Pos Malaysia Berhad to embrace a data-driven approach to reducing emissions, cutting waste, and upgrading its employees' digital skills. Best-in-class solutions for environmental, social, and governance benchmarking, plus a sustainability implementation roadmap and a Skills for the Future program will lead to dramatic reductions in direct waste and scope one and two carbon emissions along with rapid progress on workforce upskilling. We continue to build our capabilities in this area, both organically and inorganically. We are pleased that this quarter we announced three new sustainability acquisitions, Greenfish, akzente, and Avieco, extending our reach and enhancing our ability to deliver deep skills and expertise to clients in ESG measurement and non-financial reporting, net zero strategy and regulation, and real-time data analytics. Our unmatched ability to access, create, and unlock talent is valued by our clients as a key component of their compressed transformations, such as Pos Malaysia Berhad. In other cases, we help provide our clients access to talent through our managed services, and we help them become talent creators by having their shared services groups join Accenture, where they can benefit from our ability to transform, upskill, and provide new career pathways. For example, we are working with BNL, a leading Italian banking group and subsidiary of BNP Paribas, on a compressed transformation, just 18 months from start to finish that will leverage our SynOps platform, maximize our clients' existing talent, and reduce total cost of ownership. We will consolidate data to provide deeper analytic insights and a better customer experience with tailored services and faster fulfillment times for customer requests. As part of this transformation, more than 500 people from their team will move to Accenture, where we will leverage their industry-specific skills while also providing opportunities for professional development, enabling BNL to focus on strategic growth and benefit from this upskilling. We also do work with our clients that is primarily focused on their talent agenda. For example, we're collaborating with a large utility who is creating thousands of clean energy jobs in areas like renewable electricity generation, energy-saving homes and buildings, and sustainable transportation. They are doing so for unemployed, underemployed, and low- to middle-income residents. We are developing a recruitment, employment, and tracking platform that matches people's skills with available positions, leveraging AI and market insights. This solution reduces hiring time, improves the candidate experience, and unlocks talent potential to create jobs for the underrepresented residents who need the most. We are uniquely positioned to help our clients drive cost efficiencies and their growth agenda. As you may have seen, Accenture Interactive will now go to market as Accenture Song to reflect the fundamental change in the way companies must engage with customers and the incredible speed at which they need to operate and innovate. Song is uniquely operating at the intersection of creativity, technology, and intelligence to help our clients reinvent connections and meaningful experiences, including sales, commerce, marketing, new business platforms, and the Metaverse Continuum. We are helping a North American multi-brand retailer scale their digital business and accelerate growth while reducing operational costs up to $100 million over the next five years. Together, we are designing and implementing a new multi-product platform to improve the customer experience and enable the use of data and insights to drive increased engagement and better business performance overall. While still very early, we are seeing our clients look to take advantage of the metaverse, another of the five forces. For example, we are collaborating with an international property developer, MQDC, to develop their business model and design their customer experience in the metaverse. As you can tell, this continues to be an exciting time for Accenture as the depth and breadth of our business allows us to help our clients with innovative and impactful work. Back to you, KC. Thanks, Julie. Turning to our business outlook. For the Q4 of fiscal 2022, we expect revenues to be in the range of $15-$15.5 billion. This assumes the impact of FX will be about -8% compared to the Q4 of fiscal 2022 and reflects an estimated 20%-24% growth in local currency. For the full FY 2022, based on how the rates have been trending over the last few weeks, we now expect the impact of FX on our results in US dollars will be approximately -4.5% compared to fiscal 2021. For the full FY 2022, we now expect our revenue to be in the range of 25.5%-26.5% growth in local currency over fiscal 2021, which continues to assume an inorganic contribution of roughly 5%. For operating margin, we continue to expect FY 2022 to be 15.2%, a 10 basis point expansion over fiscal 2021 results. We now expect our annual effective tax rate to be in the range of 23.5%-24.5%. This compares to an adjusted effective tax rate of 23.1% in fiscal 2021. For earnings per share, we now expect our full year diluted EPS for fiscal 2022 to be in the range of $10.61-$10.70, or 21%-22% growth over adjusted fiscal 2021 results. This guidance range reflects a negative $0.14 impact from the updated FX guidance, partially offset by the increase in revenue guidance. For the full fiscal 2022, we continue to expect operating cash flow to be in the range of $8.7 billion-$9.2 billion, property and equipment additions to be approximately $700 million, and free cash flow to be in the range of $8 billion-$8.5 billion. Our free cash flow guidance continues to reflect a very strong free cash flow to net income ratio of 1.1-1.2. Finally, we continue to expect to return at least $6.5 billion through dividends and share repurchases as we remain committed to returning a substantial portion of our cash to shareholders. With that, let's open it up so we can take your questions. Angie? Thanks, KC. I would ask that you each keep to one question and a follow-up to allow as many participants as possible to ask a question. Operator, would you provide instructions for those on the call? Certainly. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press one then zero on your telephone keypad. One moment please for the first question. Our first question is from Tien-Tsin Huang. Please go ahead. Thank you so much. Good morning. Really good results here. I want to ask on the. Let me ask on bookings, which came in line with your expectations. In the book-to-bill, the quarter looked like more like pre-pandemic levels on tough comps. KC, I heard the strong pipeline comment. Just wondering, can we expect book-to-bill above 1.0, but maybe below the 1.1 or higher that we saw during the pandemic? Just trying to better understand how the pace of bookings might be changing here beyond the comps. Yeah. Thanks, Tien-Tsin. Let me just start with anchoring to what we saw this quarter in bookings and our pipeline, and I'll talk then a little bit about what we expect for Q4. As you mentioned, we were really pleased with our book-to-bill this quarter. You talked about our tough comps. We did 30% growth in consulting, and we have year-to-date a 1.1 book-to-bill in consulting through Q3. We're very pleased with that. In outsourcing, we did 23% revenue growth, again, over tough comps from last year in the quarter, and we have a 1.2 year-to-date book-to-bill. As we look ahead at Q4, we do see continued very strong revenue growth at 20%-24%. You heard that in our guidance. We do think bookings and outsourcing, bookings for both. Excuse me, revenue for both consulting and outsourcing are both gonna be in that range. We're gonna have another strong quarter in consulting and outsourcing revenue growth. On top of that, Tien-Tsin Huang, we do see another strong bookings quarter in Q4. We feel good about both our consulting and our outsourcing pipeline. Hopefully that gave you enough color on where we see bookings and the rest of the year playing out. Got it. Balance across the two, which is great. Maybe my quick follow-up that everyone's been asking us, so I thought I'd ask you guys, Julie, specifically here maybe for you, just how recession-ready is Accenture, right? With what the stock market is telling us, how is Accenture different or maybe similarly positioned to what we've seen in past down cycles? Any quick comments on that? Thank you. Sure. Thanks, Tien-Tsin. We don't predict the macroeconomic. What we do is really focus on what has helped us be successful. Obviously, you know, every financial, you know, situation is gonna be different. The pandemic, we don't know how this is gonna be versus, you know, what was happening a decade ago. Let me just focus on why we are in a strong position, and that is, you know, first of all, what's driving today is total enterprise reinvention. That means companies are trying to transform using tech, data, and AI around the enterprise. We've been investing for a decade to be in the position that we're relevant to the enterprise. We can do everything as you saw, you know, in our examples from, you know, HR and finance to, you know, manufacturing, right, to, in the insurance industry, underwriting and claims, right. It's really the entire enterprise that we're relevant to, and that'll gives us a huge power to help our clients. You see that's happening right now. You know, with the inflationary environment, you've got consumer goods companies focused very much on cost as well as growth. We're able to, you know, help them do both, right. On the other hand, you've got, say, the energy companies that have had a really rough cycle, who now have the ability to invest more, continuing on their cost discipline, but trying to also drive their, you know, transition to clean energy, right, and to advance their digitization. Our diversity in both what we can do and our diversity in industries is extraordinarily helpful. As you think about why we're a leader today, I just wanna sort of make sure people understand the power of the fact that we can do everything from strategy to consulting to managed services. If you just take a consumer goods company, one of the biggest areas of spend is in marketing. We have amazing strategists at Accenture, right? It's a huge group. It's really, really relevant. What they bring is not simply, "Here, let's go after your marketing spend. That looks like the biggest spend." What they can say is, "And let me explain to you that the trend is to, you know, digitize, to use hubs, to not be as geographic-specific. Let me show you where we've actually executed that and are managing that service for some of the leading companies. That's what our strategists can uniquely bring. We can talk to our clients and say, "We can either help you build the capability or we can do it on your behalf because we can access the talent, we can move you more quickly." As we think about why we are strong, you know, today and how we deliver on our enduring shareholder value proposition of growing faster than market, delivering margin expansion and returning to shareholders and delivering 360-degree value, it's really based on this unique set of capabilities, these very strong trusted relationships, and then, of course, all of this underpinned by technology where we're a powerhouse and we are the leading partner of the largest and, you know, technology companies in the world. Yep. That's great. Thank you for your comments. Thanks. Operator, next question. I apologize. I was talking with my mute on. We will next go to the line of Lisa Ellis with MoffettNathanson. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I'll, I guess I'll take the attrition one. It looks like attrition, you know, after coming down a bit the last couple of quarters re-upticked a bit this quarter. Can you just talk about perhaps any color there or any underlying dynamics and how is the attrition environment looking going forward? Thank you. Yeah, sure, Lisa. I I mean, you know, usually we see an uptick in attrition from Q2 to Q3. We actually also see seasonally another uptick in Q4, which we'll expect to see. You know, this is kind of in line with prior patterns. Again, it's primarily driven by India at the lower end of our pyramid, which is highly competitive. At the same time, you know, we're able to hire for the demand we see. And so, and also, as we commented before, our overall executive retention, which is the people who are driving our business every day, continues to be high. Not a lot of change, you know, and these are really seasonal upticks. Okay. Got it. Maybe a follow-up on that, and then also on Tsins' question related to the R word, the recession word. What are the types of steps can you just remind us, like if you do start to see a slowdown in the business, kind of what are the adjustments that Accenture makes or can make quite quickly, to react to a, you know, changing demand environment, realizing that, you know, you're often at the kind of front end of the spear on that given the, you know, given your strength in consulting in a lot of shorter duration projects? Sure. I mean, you know, at the core of our business is how we manage supply and demand, right? We do have high attrition, right? Our ability to not, for example, when I say high attrition, meaning our industry has high attrition, so our ability to not hire to replace that attrition, right? You know, our core competency is managing supply and demand. You know, we have an ear to the ground with our clients, but we also have a lot of analytics around what we're seeing in open demand, what we're seeing, you know, in our pipeline. You know, we manage our business with great rigor and discipline, and we'll, you know, continue to do that, you know, throughout this cycle. Of course, I just wanna make sure we're not walking past an incredible quarter from revenue and the bookings. As KC said, we see continued strong demand going into the next quarter with another strong bookings quarter and another strong revenue quarter. Yes. Got it. Terrific. Thank you. Next, we go to the line of Jason Kupferberg with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. I just wanted to start with a clarification on the full-year EPS guidance. It sounds like you're now absorbing an extra $0.29 of headwind relative to where you were last quarter, with the $0.15 from exiting Russia and the $0.14 from incremental FX headwind. Is that accurate? Jason, that is accurate in that the $0.15 for Russia, that's absolutely accurate. Then we have an additional $0.14 from the updated guidance that we gave you last quarter that we are absorbing. You are correct. Right. You're still maintaining the lower half of the EPS guidance from last quarter despite absorbing an extra $0.29. Okay. I just wanted to make sure on that. That's right. I mean, I think. Yeah, the key thing that you're asking or the key point I wanna make sure that that we're getting across is that there's no change to our business, right? Fundamentals and our business performance. Right. We actually had a bit of an increase in our revenue guidance, which helps us partially offset the $0.14 drag that we have from FX. Really strong. We continue to see really strong business operations. We just can't absorb completely all of that large FX movement that we saw from last quarter to this quarter. That's all. Of course. Of course. I guess it's encouraging to hear that there doesn't seem to really be much change at all in the demand environment. Obviously, there's been a lot of worry and wonder about that. Can you maybe just talk to us about like nuances of how client conversations have been evolving over the past three months? You know, any change in, you know, client decision-making patterns or, you know, are clients, you know, doing more recession preparation on their end? Sure. First of all, as always, we call it like we see it. Today, we see strong demand, and we're not seeing a change in, you know, decision-making. What we are seeing is a shift, depending on the industry and the market, on, you know, what clients are asking for. For example, in the industries like a consumer goods industry, you're seeing a lot more focus on cost than a year ago, right? With CEOs saying, "Hey, Julie, you know how I always used to talk to you about growth? Can we talk about growth and cost?" Right? You're seeing. Mm-hmm. You know, more investment going into help me do more with less. You know, at the core of that is cloud, data, AI. You also see a big focus on can we go faster? I was just meeting with a CEO last week who said, "Julie, can you just look at our, you know, at our strategy and are we being transformational enough?" Right? Are we challenging ourselves to go fast enough? This is where the experience that we have of doing this, particularly over the last two years, where we saw this compressed transformation, is so important. I was just speaking with an energy company last week where they, you know, like a lot of, companies early on when digital transformation started, say five, six years ago in the front office, they've been doing a bunch of experiments of digital twins around. They're saying to us, "Okay, Julie, help us understand where are we gonna get the most value, but how do we scale?" That's that unique combination we have of like, we can understand from a strategic perspective where's the biggest value, but I can then take. Like, let me take you this company over here, different industry that's been doing digital twins that we've just been massively scaling over the 18 months. Let's share with you the lessons learned on how to do that because it is the next digital frontier. There isn't as much experience, and now we'll help you go faster. The context is different depending on the industry. I think every CEO is of course focused on the macroeconomic, and people like to use that as a catalyst for doing some of the harder things around cutting costs. What we do as Accenture, because we can help on all aspects of that, we also can embed, you know, in a growth conversation. You saw the example we used of a big retailer in earnings where we're helping them grow and we're taking out $100 million in cost at the same time, right? That's what makes us so unique, and that's why we will just continue to stay very focused. You know, we're doing a lot in supply chain that, you know, those conversations accelerated in Europe for obvious reasons. They're really, it's a global phenomenon and we're doing a ton there. Of course, as we think about our business, when we look at the demand, we also look at do we need to upskill any place because we're seeing more demand, say, in supply chain, or more demand in a particular industry. That's where the agility of our learning, as you may recall, in the first six months after the pandemic, we upskilled 100,000 people to shift to cloud and collaboration technology. That's how we stay very close, and then we, you know, use these other tools we have, like our ability to upskill, to make sure that we are responding to what our clients need. Great call. Thanks for the comments. Our next question is from Ashwin Shirvaikar. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good quarter, folks. Demand trend still seems strong. I appreciate the quantitative remark on the revenue focus versus cost focus. We already saw a tick-down here in the percent of revenues from consulting as well. I guess the question is around whether you believe that consulting outsourcing balance might maybe, you know, get back down to 50/50, if you anticipate an air pocket down the road because outsourcing work just tends to have longer ramps. Could you kind of talk through that? Yeah, sure, Ashwin, happy to. I'll start with the last part first. In terms of just our mix, right? I'm not gonna guide anything into next year, but if you just look historically at our mix, it can move around 1% or 2% between consulting and outsourcing. It's generally been, as you know, for years in the zone of, like, about 55% consulting and about 45% outsourcing. That's, you know, and we're seeing the same this year. That's the first point. In terms of consulting, you know, we are really pleased with our performance to date. As you know, I gave guidance for consulting for Q4. Just a reminder, you know, that our book-to-bill is really strong for the year in consulting. Anything, as you know, over one or around one book-to-bill in consulting we consider strong. We also look at it over trailing four quarters, right? We'll give guidance for you in September for next year, and that's where we can give you some sense of what the outsourcing is, consulting type of work will be next year. No, you can look at our patterns and see it's about 55/45. Got it. No, thank you for that. I guess the follow-up is on M&A. I think you might have mentioned in a past quarter that your M&A spend target this year was closer to $4 billion. It looks like you might not get there. Any color around, you know, valuations easing, you know, what's sort of going on with regards to the strategic approach to M&A? Are you now looking? Is that also changing given the revenue versus cost focus, or is that just a longer term view? Thoughts around that would be great. Yeah. I'll let Julie talk about the strategy, but just to recap what I did say, you're right. We had previously said we thought it would be about $4 billion. We now think we've done $2.2 billion to date, 27 transactions year to date. We now think it'll be about $2.5 billion, and that's because there's about $1 billion, Ashwin, that is going to go into next year because of required regulatory approvals. That really is the biggest difference between the $2.5 billion and the $4 billion that we talked about. From a strategic point of view, we continue to believe that, you know, mergers and acquisitions, M&A, as we call it, is critical to the way we grow. There's three big reasons, right? The first is we will do it for scale. You saw us do a lot of cloud acquisitions, for example, because we wanted to capture the momentum in the market and to build scale in areas in countries like we did a big one in France, for example, where we didn't have the scale, and we had a lot of market momentum. The second reason we do it is to move into adjacencies. You saw us build Accenture Song then Interactive over years. We've used that very effectively with Industry X. You saw the umlaut big acquisition last year, for example, and that continues. You're starting to see that now in sustainability. We just announced three acquisitions. Where we're really, you know, going into new areas with new skills and capabilities. Third, we're always looking to, you know, sort of continue to add in our industry and functional expertise. That strategy has served us well, and we continue to, you know, believe that that's an important part of our growth going forward. Thank you. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Our next question is from Bryan Keane with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Good morning and congrats on the results. Wanted to specifically ask about Europe, continues to show robust growth, 30% growth, and I think KC called out Germany, France, U.K., Italy. You know, lots of concern about the unfortunate situation and war in Ukraine. Is there anything that you guys are seeing that could be in the go forward, you know, impacting Europe? Because right now we're not seeing any weakness in those results. Yeah. We're not seeing any weakness in those results. We continue to really stay close to our clients. As I talked a little bit about earlier, there's a shift in focus in many of the more impacted industries and across the board around things like energy efficiency, right? Our strength in, for example, manufacturing and sustainability is helping us drive you know conversations and helping our clients get more energy efficient for obvious reasons, given the background in Europe. Supply chain you know lots going on in supply chain. As you think about you know what we're doing there, we're doing everything from you know helping them have greater insights. We're working with a food retailer, for example, to understand how they can anticipate disruptions better and earlier using data and analytics. You know, supply chain is a big topic. Then, you know, cost because everyone's anticipating, you know, at least a continuation of the inflationary environment that we're seeing globally. Cost becomes a big focus. It's today. Again, all roads lead to not just technology, data and AI, but how do you use it to transform the business, which is our sweet spot, right? That is what we do. We partner with the technology companies and our clients to help them use these technologies to get results. That's what we're doing today. You know, that's the environment that we're seeing our clients need. Got it. No, that's helpful. Then maybe just as a quick follow-up, KC, any thoughts on the latest on pricing and Accenture's ability to maintain or even get pricing increases in some different areas where the demand is strongest? Thanks so much, and congrats again. Okay. Yes. We were pleased that we did see, again, improvement, Bryan, in our pricing. Again, reminder that pricing, when we talk about pricing, it's the margin on the work that we sold. You know, we really need to continue to focus on that, which is what we are doing to offset what we're continuing to see in wage inflation in our business, which, as we all know, is in all industries. It really is across the globe. We are seeing some improvement coming from pricing in our P&L, so I'm pleased with that. At the same time, as you would expect, we're changing the mix of people on our contracts and also using technology to help offset the impact of wage increases. Again, very focused on pricing. That's the biggest lever that we have. All of these improvements together are still lagging the compensation increases. We're still very, very focused on it. Thank you. Great. Our next question is from Bryan Bergin with Cowen. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Thank you. A follow-up here on bookings. Any changes in bookings profiles as it relates to contract duration? Are you seeing any uptick in any interest of clients to sell captive operations here? I'm curious if that type of transaction has picked up. There really is no change at all in terms of the profile of our bookings as it relates to duration. Yeah. I'd say on the captive side, it's more of a steady kind. It's been steady. I don't think I'd say ticked up or not ticked up. It's, you know, been steady for the last couple of years. Just a question on Accenture Song. Can you talk about some of the operational changes that have been reported in that business as it relates to the consolidation of agency brands and what that does for you? I think a couple things. I'd start with the rebranding is really more around reflecting what we're doing today. In Accenture Interactive and that brand was kind of old because it started a decade ago, right? And it doesn't really reflect kind of the particularly post-pandemic, which is really a complete use of technology, bringing in creative, using data and AI, and moving very, very fast. This is where you've got examples like we've given in the past of like a Jaguar Land Rover, where they're using managed services to personalize experiences, and they're moving very, very quickly. Song just really captures better what in fact we are doing there. From an operational perspective, it's, you know, it's just a natural evolution to bring together some of the brands that we've acquired over the years. As you know, we built Accenture Song through a very deliberate M&A strategy. You know, I think of it more of just kind of the natural evolution. Great. Operator, we have time for one more question, and then Julie will wrap up the call. Very good. That call comes from James Faucette with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Great. Thank you very much, and thanks for all the details this morning. Wanted to ask a couple more nuanced questions, around Accenture's operations right now. First, starting with the bench, how would you characterize your bench right now? Are there pockets of resources that are underutilized versus overutilized? How much of an operational impact could that be having right now, if any? Yeah, James, thanks for the question. I will just maybe just focus on the key metrics that we look at and we report every quarter as it talks about our people and the usage of our people and clients. We're at 91%, which is really in the zone of utilization that we like to be in. We're running a little bit hot throughout the past year and a half since the pandemic, and we're at 91%, so that's a very healthy range that we're good with. Got it. A lot of the conversation this morning obviously is focused on macro and demand, et cetera. Are there any industry groups and/or service dimensions that you're expecting to accelerate versus decelerate, especially as you know, the customers seem to be at least modifying a little bit the conversations they're having to focus a little more on cost versus growth, et cetera. Are there key parts of that, those different industries and segments that could see changes as a result? Maybe I'll just anchor to what we saw this quarter, and I can hand it over to Julie to give a little bit of color on that. We did see all 13 industries this quarter have double-digit revenue growth, right? When we talked about bookings, we had strength across all of our markets, services, and industries. Yeah. I would just add that remember, an industry isn't a monolith, right? You had, coming out of the pandemic, in almost every industry, you had some percentage, we've talked about this, who went really fast. Now you've got others who are saying, "Wait a minute. We're seeing the impact of some of the leaders move faster on their digital transformations." You know, for example, those who moved early to the cloud, we're now talking about the next phase of how do you utilize the cloud to drive new things. Remember our little formula, cloud is the foundation, data is the driver, and AI is the differentiator. You know, if you've moved to the cloud, now you're using the data in that differently, right? As opposed to those who still need to move to the cloud. Like, we are very early in the transition. The way we think about it is if you have a total enterprise, we walk our clients through what's the digital core you need to have, where are you on the maturity scale, and how do you prioritize? While we look at the industries as growing double digits, what's actually happening within the industry really depends on where you are on the maturity S-curve, and that's what drives our business, right? Because we can help the clients who are leaders go to the next level, and we're helping the ones that are behind, you know, try to leapfrog. I think it's important to look at it in that sense, that you need to have granular, deep understanding of the industries and we help our clients with that to know where to go next. Well, really appreciate that color. Great. Thanks, James. All right. In closing, we really appreciate everyone for joining us today. Thank you again to all of our people and our leaders for another outstanding quarter in every dimension, from our financial results to our 360-degree value beyond our financials. Thank you to all of our shareholders for your continued trust and support. We'll work hard every day to continue to earn it. All the best. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.