Wipro Q1 net marginally rises to Rs 2094 crore

India's third largest IT serviced company Wipro on Friday reported a negligible 0.5% rise in its consolidated net profit at Rs 2093.8 crore for the March-June quarter.

The Bengaluru-based bellwether had registered a net profit of Rs 2,082.6 crore in the year-ago period.

On sequential basis, the company's net profit rose by 16%, from Rs 1,800.8 crore in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2017-18.

Its gross revenue jumped marginally by 2.6% to Rs 13,977.7 crore during the first quarter, compared with Rs 13,626.1 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.

The gross profit of the company stood at Rs 3,942.7 crore for the quarter under consideration, against Rs 3,915 crore in the year-ago period, showing a jump of 0.7%.

“We have seen pickup in spending in the developed markets, particularly in North America and BFSI. Our investments in Digital continue to help us build differentiation in key industry segments, which is resulting in a consistent improvement in our client metrics. We have had a good quarter of order bookings and I am confident we are moving in the right direction,” Abidali Z Neemuchwala, CEO said.

The operating margin for the company during the quarter stood at 17.2%.

The company expects revenue from IT Services business to be in the range of $2,009 million to $2,049 million. This translates into a sequential growth of 0.3% to 2.3%, excluding the impact of the divestment of company's hosted data center services business which concluded in the quarter ended June 30, 2018. This sale infused a gain in the exchequer of the company amounting to Rs 252.9 crore ($36.9 million) in the quarter.

“We successfully concluded the sale of our hosted data center business in the quarter. We continue to improve our operating metrics and generated strong operating cash flows at 136% of our Net Income during the quarter,” Jatin Dalal, Chief Financial Officer said.

On geographical front, the revenue contributed by America was 54.9% of company's total revenue, followed by Europe at 25.6%.

The company acquired 75 new clients in the quarter, taking the number to 1,254 on June 30, 2018.

The company's stock closed 0.77% lower on BSE on Friday, at Rs 283.05 per scrip.