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Sapient Corporation Q2 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

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2008-08-24 01:04:10.0

Tags: Sapient Corp.

Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

(Operator instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Rod Bourgeois with Bernstein. Please proceed.

Rod BourgeoisBernstein

Yes, guys. Just wanted to start by asking about your 2008 revenue and margin guidance, where you attempted to raise this 2008 guidance, given the strong performance in Q2, you certainly are exceeding the street's expectations, so to the extent that you're exceeding your own. Were you attempted to take up the full year guidance?

Joe Tibbetts

Rob, we certainly had a good quarter and helped us with our confidence towards meeting our goals for the year. I think we feel that the low end of some of the ranges we've given are a little easier to achieve now, but we thought we should stick with the ranges that we have.

Rod BourgeoisBernstein

Got it. That makes sense. I mean I think in this environment, just keeping the guidance intact probably does make sense given the skepticism of investors not related to the macro environment. The longer-term operating margin goal has been 13% to 16% in the long run. That's also your target for Q4. Are you feeling better about that longer-term target of being able to do 13% to 16% on an annualized basis at some point in the future?

Joe Tibbetts

Yes. I mean I think what we have said before about that is still true. And that is that's a goal we set out for ourselves sometime ago. As you know, we've been marching towards it, and being very successful in approaching in and as we've reiterated tonight, we think we're going to get there. I think the thought is as we get closer to it we're going to be able to look around from that level. We'll look at the market, look at our business, decide what we're doing, and then assess what our next longer-term goal should be, how much additional profit can we add on top of that. So I think it's a little premature for us to react too strongly to that right now, but certainly it's our goal to continue to improve profits of the company.

Rod BourgeoisBernstein

Right. Okay. And then just a quick sort of question about the share buyback. Why no plan to add to your share buyback program?

Joe Tibbetts

I think it's just a matter of we want to continue to keep the ability to make strategic moves, if we decide we need to do that, or want to do that based on what we see in the market, what we see for opportunities to serve our clients the way we want to. We've said before, there's always an amount of money you want to have tucked aside for the rainy day, you need your normal working capital, we have the issue of the amount, almost $20 million of auction rate security money that, at this point is not liquid, although we hope and believe that longer-term it will be. And then we've got the usual distribution of cash around the world that some of which access would come at a short-term price of taxation and that sort of thing. So putting that all together, the decision at this point is to hold, but as I said in my remarks, that's a topic of constant discussion as we go forward, and will be something that we continue to address as we go forward and could go either way.

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