Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from David Cohen – JP Morgan.
David Cohen – JP Morgan
I think if I heard you right you said that some softness in the economy would have a bit of adverse effect on fiscal 2009. Did I get that right?
Tom Holler
Yes, our expectation is for some impact due to the uncertain economic conditions. Specifically we are expecting a slower rate of growth in IT services spend.
David Cohen – JP Morgan
Can you help me just reconcile that with, I think Kris you commented at the beginning there would be an acceleration because of the difficult economy. So is it just a timing thing that things are going to take a little longer but then the platforming will bring more work your way over time?
Kris Canekeratne
Just to build on that a little bit, we clearly see very strong underlying growth in our business and at the same time we see as the result of client consolidation some projects that have been terminated especially in the financial services arena, that there will be a temporary slow down in growth that will impact Q1. We have also won a record number of new clients. We won ten last quarter, five the quarter before that and I think for the full year we won 24 clients and clearly these clients are starting to ramp up also.
As the year progresses although we will see a little bit of a slow down in Q1 once again the underlying growth in our business is very healthy.
David Cohen – JP Morgan
In terms of consolidation, can you quantify how much of the revenue is going to come out because of consolidation and then maybe talk about it by vertical as well?
Tom Holler
I can’t specifically quantify in dollar amounts or percentage necessarily for you. What I can tell you is that we have seen consolidation in each of our industry groups. We saw some impact in our fourth quarter. We will see a continued impact near-term which is reflected in our guidance and as Kris stated the impact of the client consolidation is masking the underlying health of the business.
We are seeing existing client expansion. We have a nice portfolio of new clients that are expanding and will continue to expand at an increasing rate throughout the fiscal year but near term we do see impact from some of this consolidation.
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