BANGALORE: In what came as a shock for the markets, Infosys Technologies on Wednesday for the first time admitted that the US slowdown would impact its bottom line during the current fiscal. Company chairman and CEO N R Narayana Murthy said that he expected a revenue growth of 30 per cent during 2001-02 against 100 per cent achieved in fiscal 2000-01, the results of which were announced on Wednesday.
Infosys’ performance in 2000-01, which fell below market expectations, brought down most of the software scrips. The BSE IT index crashed by a huge 15 per cent by the end of the day. Infosys hit the lower circuit breaker soon after the results were announced. Wipro and HCL Technologies later joined Infosys to touch the lower circuit breaker of 16 per cent. The company’s outlook is expected to have a ripple effect on the software stocks in the coming days.
Murthy said that his company would "exploit any new opportunity for higher growth. He added that despite the tech slowdown, the US was still the largest market. Speaking to the press, Infosys managing director Nandan Nilekani
said, "We expect the total income for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2002, to be between Rs 2,500 crore and Rs 2,560 crore and earnings per share to be between Rs 118 to Rs 121."
Said Nandan Nilekani, "We have entered into strategic alliances with some of the premier companies like Deutsche Investment Trust and Siemens Energy and Automation. Our addition of 37 new clients is the highest in our history and these client wins are especially in the financial services and manufacturing
sectors." He added, "We have a resilient business model that can meet the challenges thrown up by changing market conditions." He also mentioned that Infosys is planning to make move into the health and pharmaceutical services sector."
The human resource intake for the company rose to 9,831 this March end, up from 8,910 in December 2000 and 5,389 on March 31, 2000. Of these, 8,656 were software professionals, 1,015 are still undergoing training and 148 belong to the banking product group. Said K Dinesh, HRD, Information Systems, Quality and Productivity, Infosys, "We continue to focus on hiring middle level managers, who will be critical for our growth in the years to come by. We have
built a strong hiring engine which can scale up to meet the organization’s requirements."