Wipro profit from IT services up 17 per cent
Number of active clients declines in June
Investments in emerging geographies helped India’s third largest IT services company-Wipro Ltd, to register a profit before Interest & Tax (PBIT) of Rs 1,078 crores from IT services segment in the quarter ending June 30, 2009, a growth of 17 per cent over the same quarter last year.
The revenue from IT services at Rs 4,825 crore in the June quarter was 10 per cent higher than last year.
However, in dollar terms the IT services business revenue declined sequentially and annually. The revenue was was $ 1,033 million, a sequential decline of 1.3 per cent and yoy decline of 3.3 per cent.
According to the company the revenue of Wipro Ltd increased 5 per cent to Rs 6,274 crores in the June quarter. It registered a profit after tax of Rs 1016 crore, a jump of 12 percent over the same quarter last year. The IT product business of the company grew 2 per cent to Rs 760 crore from 746 crore last year. “We are starting to see the first signs of stability in the business as ramp downs start to taper off and volumes start to stabilise. We are adapting ourselves for the new reality, we have stepped up investments in emerging geographies,” said Wipro Chairman Azim Premji.
“We are optimistic about the long term viability of Indian IT industry and will continue to invest for the future in oppurtunities like cloud computing and Green IT”, addded Premji.
Improved parameters
The IT services added 26 new clients in this quarter but the number of active clients declined from 863 at the end of March 2009 to 830 at the end of June quarter. The revenue from wipro consumer care and lightinging business grew 7 per cent yoy to Rs 546 crore from 512 crore same period last year.
“Even as the environment is challenging. we improved on several operating parameters to deliver margin expansion of 0.6 percent to 22.3 per cent in the IT service segments,” said Wipro Executive director and CFO Suresh Senapaty.
The company added 711 more employees, the total number of employees in the IT services business divison is 98,521 including IT services global, India and BPO. The company has also plans to hire 30 per cent of local employees for onsite projects.
Cautious forecast
Like the other IT majors Infosys and TCS who came out with their results earlier, the company gave a cautious forecast for the quarter ending September 30,2009. “Looking ahead for the quarter ending September 30, 2009, we expect revenue from IT services business to be in the range of of $1,035 million to $1,053 million,” added Senapaty.
The company also won a nine year IT outsourcing contract from Unitech wireless and also a multi million dollar deal with a leading service provider of semi conductor packaging, assembly and testing in Asia.
