27 April 2015
Technology | Update
Real Estate
Technology
Capgemini acquires iGate
Is IT Services ripe for consolidation?
Bucking the fashionable trend of hunting for innovative start-ups in and
around Digital, Capgemini (CAP FP) has gone ahead with the acquisition of
iGate for USD4b.
The deal improves CAP’s offshore competitiveness, but drives only marginal
increase in competitive intensity for well entrenched India-based providers,
in our view.
While incremental revenues in years to come will be dominated by Digital-led
capabilities, we believe there are still cost efficiency/service cross-sell
synergies to be had in mergers of traditional providers.
Such instances going forward may get accentuated, especially if one of the
two companies lags in newer technology areas.
Merger of two traditional IT Services providers
Capgemini (CAP) today announced the acquisition of IGate in what is among the
larger consolidations in the IT Services landscape. CAP is paying ~USD4b for the
transaction, at ~19x IGate’s consensus CY16 earnings and ~24x trailing earnings.
IGate’s CY14 revenue was USD1.3b, +10.2% YoY. The combined entity will have
a revenue of ~USD13b, 15% below TCS. The combined headcount will rise to
177,000 people, after adding 33,000 from iGate.
HP’s acquisition of EDS in 2008, which more than doubled the combined entity’s
services revenue to USD38b, remains the largest till date. In 2006, CAP had
acquired Kanbay for USD1.25b, which had a revenue rate of USD400m. In 2011,
IGate had acquired Patni Computers, with the rationale of developing skills to
compete in large deals.
The merger of two largely traditional IT Service providers is contrary to the hot
trend of service providers hunting to invest in innovative cloud-powered Digital-
led start-ups.
When IGate acquired Patni in 2011, the explained rationale of increasing
potential to win large deals made sense. But as cloud/Digital started to shape
the way clients think their IT budgets, such large multi-year deals are
increasingly becoming exceptions than the rule. In such a scenario, if there is an
overlap of multiple large accounts which could be up for renewal, it may make
sense for such a merger to help gain a more strategic and relevant foothold in a
client. But interestingly, even the client overlap is minimal.
Given that in scale terms, the combined entity continues to remain between
INFO and TCS, it does not suggest serious threat to the existing order of India-
based IT service providers. CAP’s offshoring presence gets enhanced as a result,
but at a stage when offshore cost arbitrage as the sole value proposition has
increasingly come into question.
Bucks the buzz around shopping for innovative start-ups
Ashish Chopra
(Ashish.Chopra@MotilalOswal.com); +91 22 3982 5424
Siddharth Vora
(Siddharth.Vora@MotilalOswal.com); +91 22 3982 5585
Investors are advised to refer through disclosures made at the end of the Research Report.
27 April 2015
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Motilal Oswal research is available on
www.motilaloswal.com/Institutional-Equities,
Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, Factset and S&P Capital.