Monday, March 30, 2020

HCL Technologies COVID-19 Status update

HCL Technologies Ltd (HCL) has been monitoring the Covid-19 outbreak since late January and had invoked its Business Continuity Plan and Risk Management Framework quite early to minimize the impact on its employees and clients. The situation arising out of this outbreak and its rapid spread across the world is unprecedented and is extremely dynamic. The economic impact is visible with varying degrees of intensity across multiple countries where we operate.

HCL has had a well-defined and structured pandemic policy in place which is resilient, pragmatic and accords paramount importance to employee safety & health and client commitments. We are actively engaged with our clients and have executed the client-specific and HCL internal operations-centric Business Continuity Plan that ensures continuity in delivering to our client and employee commitments. HCL is constantly reviewing the situation at hand with utmost priority and fully complying with all government advisories and recommendations. Given the extended nature of this situation, we have looked at ensuring that we put in medium-term sustainable measures in place to ensure continuity of all our operations and client deliverables. We have been successful in achieving this as of today. A large number of our clients have expressed their deep appreciation of our efforts and speed at which we have been able to achieve the current state.

As of today, 76% of our India-based employees and 92% of our employees in other geographies are enabled to work from home. In certain geographies, a limited set of our employees are working from our offices, wherever it is permissible by the government and local authorities. It is noteworthy that we have not witnessed any outages or major disruption in operations with this newer format of work from home delivery. We would like to use this opportunity to thank our clients, industry bodies and government officials who have been very supportive in our efforts so far.

Likely Impact on business
While the impact on this quarter’s numbers is yet to be quantified, we don’t expect it to be significant. Our exposure to the more impacted verticals are not significant. Booking during this quarter has largely been on track as significant part of closures happened in January.
Our business model is a healthy mix of recurring product revenues, managed services and discretionary spend led professional services. From a vertical perspective, our exposure to verticals like Oil & Gas, Travel & Hospitality, High-End Retail is in single digits.
We recognize our investments in risk management systems and processes over the last several years are helping us to minimize the short-term impact and to be adequately prepared for the medium term, if it gets worse. We are also confident our business model will help us to emerge stronger in the longer term as it has been built for resilience during tough times.
Our wishes of safety and best of health to everyone out there and we hope and pray for the earliest end to the crisis. Keep a safe distance.

About HCL Technologies image001

HCL Technologies (HCL) empowers global enterprises with technology for the next decade today. HCL’s Mode 1-2-3 strategy, through its deep-domain industry expertise, customer-centricity and entrepreneurial culture of ideapreneurship™ enables businesses to transform into next-gen enterprises. 

HCL offers its services and products through three business units - IT and Business Services (ITBS), Engineering and R&D Services (ERS) and Products & Platforms (P&P). ITBS enables global enterprises to transform their businesses through offerings in areas of Applications, Infrastructure, Digital Process Operations and next generational digital transformation solutions. ERS offers engineering services and solutions in all aspects of product development and platform engineering. Under P&P, HCL provides modernized software products to global clients for their technology and industry-specific requirements. Through its cutting-edge co-innovation labs, global delivery capabilities and broad global network, HCL delivers holistic services in various industry verticals, categorized under Financial Services, Manufacturing, Technology & Services, Telecom & Media, Retail & CPG, Life Sciences & Healthcare and Public Services. 

As a leading global technology company, HCL takes pride in its diversity, social responsibility, sustainability and education initiatives. As of 12 months ended December 31, 2019, HCL has a consolidated revenue of US$ 9.7 billion and its 149,000 ideapreneurs operate out of 45 countries. For more information, visit www.hcltech.com

Forward–looking Statements image001

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. All statements, other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the statements containing the words 'planned', 'expects', 'believes’,’ strategy', 'opportunity', 'anticipates', 'hopes' or other similar words. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding impact of pending regulatory proceedings, fluctuations in earnings, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services, business process outsourcing and consulting services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, customer acceptances of our services, products and fee structures, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, our ability to integrate acquired assets in a cost-effective and timely manner, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-timeframe contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, the success of our brand development efforts, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies /entities in which we have made strategic investments, withdrawal of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property, other risks, uncertainties and general economic conditions affecting our industry. There can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements made herein will prove to be accurate, and issuance of such forward-looking statements should not be regarded as a representation by the Company, or any other person, that the objective and plans of the Company will be achieved. All forward-looking statements made herein are based on information presently available to the Management of the Company and the Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the Company.