Investments in acquisitions and startups enrich Capgemini’s next-generation solutions portfolio and improve its competitive position

“Capgemini has taken multiple steps to enhance its portfolio to drive transformations through next-generation technologies and create business value for clients. The acquisition of Altran to deliver digital transformation in the industrial sector, enhanced relationships with Microsoft around Microsoft Azure solutions and with SAP around certification of industry innovation accelerators in manufacturing and retail, and investment in startups and joint commercial activities exemplify Capgemini’s recent activities to advance its competitive position,” said Senior Analyst Elitsa Bakalova. “Offering deep industry expertise improves Capgemini’s ability to address clients’ business-specific challenges. The company will continue to experience momentum in cloud services, with cloud revenue driven by offerings in the Capgemini Cloud Platform portfolio that support clients when building, migrating and managing applications and infrastructures in cloud environments. Offering each client its entire portfolio of solutions enables Capgemini to provide holistic transformational solutions and effectively compete with peers. The expanded partnership with Microsoft around Microsoft Azure solutions will enable Capgemini to increase cloud professional services activities, especially around cloud application development and maintenance.”

Additional assessments publishing this week from our analyst teams

Apple continues to pursue both service and hardware initiatives to maintain growth. The company is leveraging services and its wide install base to grow continuous revenue streams as device refresh activity wanes amid lengthening device life cycles and slowing hardware advances. While services are growing as a cornerstone strategy for Apple, the company also remains focused on maintaining its market perception as the most advanced smartphone producer. TBR expects the iPhone 11, which is slated to be released later in 2019, to have steady sales, but Apple will likely not see breakout sales like that of the iPhone X until the release of the 2020 model, which will deliver larger hardware upgrades such as 5G enablement. — Dan Callahan, Analyst

Google doubled its revenue over the past six quarters, surpassing $2 billion in 2Q19 as the vendor migrates customers to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and attains particularly strong revenue growth from selling analytics. Google’s PaaS business will continue to drive revenue growth as enterprises integrate their hybrid environment with Anthos and leverage Google’s analytics, AI and machine learning offerings. In addition, Google supplements growth with G Suite as the company’s growing sales base brings industry-specific versions of the collaboration suite to market and cross-sells G Suite into GCP-oriented customer engagements. — Jack McElwee, Research Analyst

Cognizant has reworked its corporate strategy to emphasize the criticality of digital technologies to its growth plans. Pursuing acquisitions, such as that of Meritsoft, enables Cognizant to diversify its revenue mix, fostering new sources of digital revenues within key verticals. We expect Cognizant will maintain steady revenue growth year-to-year, largely led by demand around its digital operations capabilities.    — Kelly Lesiczka, Analyst

An integrated sales structure, paired with investments in price-competitive AI solutions and on-site presence, will help Infosys transform its brand identity. At the same time as Infosys builds a healthy pipeline, the company may need to calibrate stakeholders’ expectations around margins to sustain trust. — Boz Hristov, Senior Analyst

Reinforcing Verizon’s reputation as a premium wireless service provider will be essential for the operator to sustain revenue growth in the 5G era, as competitive pressures from T-Mobile will intensify, especially given the pending Sprint merger. Though Verizon will continue to trail T-Mobile in postpaid phone net additions over the next several years, Verizon will be able to sustain revenue growth by attracting customers willing to pay a higher price for the operator’s network coverage and premium unlimited data plans. — Steve Vachon, Analyst

Sprint continues to undercut its rivals as the operator remains reliant on competitive pricing to attract subscribers given its subpar network coverage, though the company is moving away from more aggressive promotions, such as its previous Cut Your Bill in Half offer, to improve average revenue per user (ARPU). Sprint will continue to struggle to balance ARPU and subscriber growth, however, as many customers are unwilling to pay higher prices for the company’s network quality and Sprint is experiencing high churn rates from customers rolling off promotional pricing offers. — Steve Vachon

Public sector IT services spotlight: The U.S. federal earnings season continues the week of July 29 with three services-led defense contractors — Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), Leidos and ManTech — releasing their fiscal results for the second calendar quarter of 2019.

As reported on Monday, July 29, Booz Allen Hamilton delivered 10.8% year-to-year growth during 2Q19, the first quarter of its fiscal 2020, and 100% of BAH’s growth was organic as the company continues to eschew acquisitions. BAH’s strong performance in 2Q19 reflects how ideally positioned the company is to serve its federal clientele, as well as a growing number of commercial entities, with a high-value, differentiated solutions suite spanning the strategy, mission and critical IT needs of public and private sector clients alike. As a result of its strong 2Q19 year-to-year growth, BAH is also likely to be the top-performing organic growth vendor in TBR’s upcoming 2Q19 Public Sector IT Services Benchmark (publishing in early October). BAH’s growth and margin performance (operating margin of 9.8%) in 2Q19 mostly outstripped that of the trio of federal competitors that released 2Q19 earnings and fiscal performance last week: Raytheon (YTY growth of 5.3%; operating margin of 9.1%); General Dynamics Information Technology (YTY contraction of 11.6%; operating margin of 7.1%); and Northrop Grumman Technology Services (YTY contraction of 0.4%; operating margin of 10.8%). We believe BAH’s performance relates directly to its solution set, which sits at the juncture of federal agency IT and mission objectives with a differentiating blend of consulting, technology and emerging solutions.           — John Caucis, Senior Analyst  

Leidos will release its earnings on Tuesday, July 30, and is expected to post top-line, year-to-year growth of between 5% and 7% to reach about $2.7 billion in 2Q19 revenue. Growth will derive from Leidos’ continued strong pace of new awards, net increases in volume across several high-profile programs, and improving win rates, which are accelerating the conversion of pipeline opportunities into bookings and revenue. Leidos should also be able to offset the wind-down of existing programs and some limited currency headwinds from unfavorable swings in the U.S. dollar. The company has guided for 2019 revenue of between $10.5 billion and $10.9 billion, implying a median 5% growth rate, and record backlog levels achieved in prior quarters positions Leidos well to achieve its projections. — John Caucis  

Finally, ManTech will release its 2Q19 fiscal performance and earnings after business hours on Wednesday, July 31. ManTech’s latest strategic acquisition (Kforce Government Solutions, or KGS) will add roughly $100 million in new revenue and expand ManTech’s opportunity set in the federal civilian segment, augmenting robust Department of Defense (DOD) and intelligence growth while inorganically boosting ManTech’s top-line growth (projected to be between 6% and 8% in 2Q19). ManTech’s top-line growth in 2Q19 should be significantly augmented by the KGS acquisition, as the purchase closed in April and immediately began to contribute inorganic revenue to ManTech’s top line. On an organic basis, classified customers continue to accelerate spend with ManTech, while spending on behalf of ManTech’s principal DOD and Intelligence Community clients continues trending upward. Prior to the KGS acquisition, ManTech tendered a 2019 outlook for full-year 2019 revenue of between $2.05 billion and $2.15 billion, implying growth of between 4.7% and 9.8% over FY18 revenue of $1.96 billion. KGS is expected to contribute between $60 million and $80 million in inorganic revenue during the latter nine months of FY19; this compelled ManTech to elevate its prior guidance for FY19 revenue to instead reach between $2.13 billion and $2.21 billion, implying growth of between 8.8% and 12.8% over FY18. — John Caucis