LIC cuts stake in Infy to 3.71%; sells shares worth Rs 2,600cr

State-owned life insurer LIC has pared its stake in IT major Infosys to 3.71 per cent during the October-December quarter, raising about Rs 2,600 crore.

The biggest institutional investor in the stock market had 4.95 per cent stake in Infosys during the July-September quarter. As on December 31, that fell to 3.71 per cent as per the latest data available with the stock exchanges.

This was the second consecutive quarterly decline in LIC's stake in Infosys.

During the April-June quarter, LIC's stake in the country's second largest software services exporter stood at 6.72 per cent. Prior to this, the life insurer's holding in Infosys was at 5.96 per cent.

Taking into account the current market value of Infosys shares, the 1.24 percentage points decline in LIC's holding in the company would be worth about Rs 2,650 crore.

The Infosys scrip has moved in a wide range from about Rs 2,200 level to around Rs 3,760 in the past 10 months. It closed at Rs 3,728 on the BSE, after touching 52-week high of Rs 3,759.90 on Friday.

In the past few months, Infosys has been witnessing an exodus of its senior-level executives.

The company saw the exit of 8 high-profile executives, including five in the last quarter, ever since Narayana Murthy returned to the helm in June, bringing along his son Rohan as Executive Assistant.

Last month, Infosys Senior Vice President Subrahmanyam Goparaju and head of BPO business V Balakrishnan quit the company.

In November, Stephen R Pratt the firm's Head of Utilities and Resources for North America had put in his papers. In September, Infosys Head of BPO sales in Australia Kartik Jayaraman and BPO Head Latin America Humberto Andrade had quit the company.

LIC appears to have sold shares at a time when Foreign Institutional Investors marginally shored up their stake.

FII holding in Infosys inched up from 39.93 per cent during the July-September quarter to 40.65 per cent in the October-December period.

However, domestic institutional investors reduced their holding from 16.16 per cent to 15.35 per cent during the same period, shows the stock exchange data.

For the quarter ended December 31, Infosys posted 21.4 per cent rise in net profit to Rs 2,875 crore, while its revenue rose 25 per cent to Rs 13,026 crore.