Infosys on Wednesday reported a 11.5% jump in first quarter net profit to ₹4,233 crore, even as revenue climbed 8.5% to ₹23,665 crore. The IT major also reinstated the practice of offering guidance for the year, signalling that the uncertainty over client tech spending was possibly easing.
The company said it foresaw revenue at least remaining flat or growing up to 2% for the fiscal ending March 2021 over last year. It had avoided offering guidance when it announced the March quarter results.
Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said: “We had an exceptionally good quarter; we won a $1.7 billion large deal. Investment management player Vanguard recently partnered with us for a large digital transformation engagement. Also, we are seeing good traction in the areas of cloud, cost efficiency, automation, cybersecurity and consolidation, although there is significant uncertainty still in the market. All these factors have given us confidence to reinstate our guidance.”
“Operating margin expanded to 22.7% driven by deployment of our strategic cost levers along with tactical opportunities triggered by the CoViD-19 situation,” said Nilanjan Roy, CFO.
Mr. Parekh further said that economic uncertainty still remained globally.
On the deal pipeline, Infosys said in a statement, “We are seeing a healthy deal pipeline for the next two quarters. We have active discussions with several large enterprises for the digital transformation business.”
People factor
Infosys also said 90% of those who had been extended offers had been onboarded, and the remaining would join this quarter.
Onboarding of the more than 20,000 freshers would start in a phased manner by the end of this quarter, the statement added.
Voluntary attrition in IT services declined to 11.7% from 20.2% a year earlier.
COO Pravin Rao said, “Visa has no impact in the short term, until December-end. We have been focussing on localisation in the last few years and currently 60% of our overseas employees are locals, and therefore we are fairly comfortable and visa independent.”
