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Perficient had a tough second quarter, but it managed to eke out modest revenue growth that should make it easier for the leadership team to assuage investors’ concerns.

Proficient wrapped up the three-month period ended June 30 with net income of $26.4 million. That’s down from $27.8 million in the year-ago period.

The firm’s top line did better in the second quarter. Perficient delivered fee income of $231.1 million, up from $222.7 million a year earlier, which works out to a 4% increase.

Perficient makes money by selling technology consulting services to large companies. Its services range from the highly technical to the IT-adjacent. 

Perficient can rebuild a legacy mainframe application to run in the cloud or set up a CRM for a company struggling with disorganized sales teams. The consultancy also takes on less technical projects, like marketing projects focused on sprucing up companies’ digital ad campaigns.

The firm offers its services across three major price tiers.

Clients can entrust their projects to Perficient employees based in North America. If a company is on a budget, it can nearshore the project to Perficient staffers in South America or offshore it to locations such as India.

There are a number of verticals where Perficient has a particularly major foothold. One of those verticals is the healthcare sector, where Perficient ranks as the fourth largest IT services provider.

But even with its well-established market position and deep-pocketed client base, the firm is not immune to microeconomic turbulence.

Perficient recently shaved more than $40 million off its revenue forecast for its the fiscal year. The company is now projecting revenues of $900 million to $916 million, while earnings per share are also expected to be significantly lower than originally anticipated.

That means the Perficient leadership team is facing a three-pronged challenge going into the latter half of the firm’s fiscal year.

First, executives will have to find a way of rekindling the firm’s revenue growth. Furthermore, they will have to do so while keeping expenses to a minimum so as to avoid further decreasing the firm’s earnings.

The third challenge will be posed by the coming wave of investor pressure Perficient can expect if its revenue growth and earnings continue to erode. The firm’s leadership team will have to balance its long-term goals of accelerating revenue growth with investors’ short-term expectations for rapid bottom line improvements. 

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