IT major Accenture on Thursday provided its fourth quarter revenue guidance which is below Wall Street estimates. The company guided its Q4 revenue to be in the range of $15.75 billion to $16.35 billion. Analysts had earlier estimated the company’s Q4 revenue to be about $16.35 billion.

The Irish-American IT company, which announced its third quarter results on Thursday, follows a September–August financial year. Accenture, which is a bellwether for Indian IT services companies, also said that for the full fiscal 2023, the company’s updated revenue growth to be in the range of 8% to 9% in local currency, compared to 8% to 10% provided earlier.

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The software behemoth reported a revenue of $16.6 billion in the May ending quarter of fiscal 2023, up 5% quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q). Operating income for the same period was $2.35 billion, down 9.6% q-o-q.

Accenture’s total employee headcount fell by 6,000 during the third quarter of its financial year. The total headcount of the company fell to 732,000 in May quarter of FY23, after staying over 738,000 during the last two quarters.

In March this year, Accenture announced that it will lay off 19,000 employees, citing currency headwinds and wage inflation having a direct impact on its decision. During the third quarter of fiscal 2023, Accenture recorded business optimisation costs of $347 million, primarily for employee severance.

The company is slated to incur total business optimisation costs of approximately $1.5 billion, with approximately $800 million in fiscal 2023 and $700 million in fiscal 2024. “This consists of approximately $1.2 billion of employee severance and other personnel costs and $300 million of costs related to the consolidation of office space.”

The company, in its financial statement, said, “We hire to meet current and projected future demand.

We proactively plan and manage the size and composition of our workforce and take actions as needed to address changes in the anticipated demand for our services and solutions, given that compensation costs are the most significant portion of our operating expenses.”

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Julie Sweet, chair and CEO, Accenture, said, “Our third quarter results reflect solid bookings and revenue and very strong adjusted operating margin, earnings per share and free cash flow, which demonstrates the rigor and discipline with which we run our business. The strength of our strategy to be our clients’ transformation partner of choice continues to resonate, with 26 clients with quarterly bookings of $100 million or more.”