By Hugo Lhomedet and Alessandro Parodi
(Reuters) -France’s Teleperformance expects faster sales growth this year thanks to the consolidation of two acquisitions and AI partnerships, the call centre and office services group said on Thursday, after beating market expectations for 2024 revenue.
The company, which provides decentralised customer service and moderation solutions, forecast like-for-like sales growth between 3% and 5% in 2025 and earmarked up to 100 million euros ($104 million) of investments in artificial intelligence.
Its yearly sales were up 2.6% on a pro-forma basis to 10.28 billion euros, higher than the average analysts’ forecast of 10.23 billion euros, according to LSEG’s IBES data.
It also expects an increase of up to 10% in its earnings before interest, taxes and amortisation (EBITA) margin, it said.
In 2023, Teleperformance bought smaller rival Majorel and earlier in February it completed the $490 million acquisition of U.S.-based firm ZP Better Together, which provides accessible communication solutions for deaf and hard-of-hearing users.
“There are a lot of technologies out there, but often the key challenge is how to scale these technologies and we have the global distribution,” Chief Financial Officer Olivier Rigaudy told journalists in a post-earnings call.
Technologies adopted so far include a speech enhancement tool to standardize pronunciation among call centre agents, he said.
Teleperformance’s debt nearly doubled in 2023 following its 3-billion-euro Majorel takeover, a deal aimed at protecting the company against artificial intelligence replacing some of its services but which weighed heavily on its stock price.
Its net debt dropped by 15% to 3.89 billion euros last year, as the firm pledged to reduce costs, including its November announcement it was cutting 600 jobs in France.
Rigaudy expects to reduce the debt again in 2025.
The outsourcing firm employs more than 410,000 people worldwide.
The company proposed a dividend of 4.20 euros per share on its 2024 results, up 9% from what it paid out the previous year.
($1 = 0.9610 euros)
(Reporting by Hugo Lhomedet and Alessandro Parodi; Editing by David Evans and Lisa Shumaker)
