French IT consulting group Capgemini forecast weaker revenue growth and said it would slow down hiring in 2023 amid a tech sector downturn.
The comments come as slowing growth, soaring inflation and a looming recession push tech companies including US giants Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon to slash jobs.
Capgemini, which offers consulting, digital, technical and engineering services, grew its workforce by 11 percent in 2022, reaching a headcount of 359,600 at the end of December. However, the number of staff rose just 0.3 percent from the end of September.
Chief executive Aiman Ezzat said the group had slowed hiring in response to sluggish demand for cloud, data and artificial intelligence services.
"We are optimising our operation, taking advantage of the lower attrition and also factoring the fact that we have lower growth in front of us," Ezzat told analysts in a call.
"(I'm) not going to do a prediction regarding headcount growth, but to see our growth in 2023, we'll have to increase headcount," he added.
Capgemini expects its 2023 revenue to grow between 4 percent and 7 percent in constant currency, compared with 16.6 percent last year.
Its annual revenue reached 22 billion euros (S$31.41 billion) on bookings of 23.7 billion euros, an increase of 16.8 percent at constant exchange rates.
The Paris-based company also forecast 2023 operating margin in a range of 13.0 percent to 13.2 percent, and organic free cash flow of around 1.8 billion euros.
