By IANS
Bangalore : Wipro Ltd. Friday reported a net profit of Rs.8.5 billion ($210 million) for the third quarter ended Dec 31, with a modest growth of 12 percent but managed to beat expectations with $910 million IT revenues.
Under the Indian accounting system, the firm’s flagship IT division logged revenues of Rs.36.2 billion against Rs.28.8 billion in the same period a year ago. The revenues rose 14.3 percent sequentially from the previous quarter (July-September) of fiscal year 2007-08, a company statement said.
In the financial statement, the IT bellwether said its total revenue, however, increased by 33 percent to Rs.53 billion during Q3 from Rs.40 billion in the same period a year ago under the Indian accounting system.
Under the US accounting system, total revenues shot up 32 percent year-on-year to $1.33 billion from $1 billion in the same quarter a year ago.
“The results for the quarter are satisfying. We continue to see good momentum in all our businesses,” Wipro chairman Azim H. Premji told reporters at a briefing on the company’s performance.
“Revenues from our global IT services at $910 million were ahead of our guidance of $905 million given at the beginning of the quarter,” Premji added.
In the wake of exceeding forecast for Q3, Premji said the revenue guidance for the company’s global IT services and products business for the fourth quarter (January-March) of this fiscal would be $955 million under the US accounting system.
“We expect revenue from our global IT services to be about $955 million for the quarter (Q4) ending March 31, 2008,” Premji added.
“Our financial services business grew nearly double digit sequentially during the quarter (Q3) despite this being challenging times for the sector. Similarly, we had strong growth in our BPO business and testing services,” he said.
Chief financial officer Suresh Senapaty said the company’s strategies helped it to mitigate pressures on profitability on account of rupee appreciation.
“The drop in our global IT margins by 100 basis points sequentially was on account of acquiring the US-based Infocrossing during the quarter under review,” Senapaty said.
The IT services business added 39 clients and bagged five multi-year, multi-million deals in Q3.
Wipro’s IT business, catering to India, Middle East and the Asia Pacific regions, grew 39 percent to Rs.9.7 billion from Rs.7 billion in the same period a year ago.
“The infotech division won a large total outsourcing deal in the telecom sector during the quarter, indicating the increasing size of deals in the Indian market and of our abilities to offer transformational solutions to customers,” Senapaty said.