Wipro Q4 net up 3 per cent

BANGALORE, INDIA: IT major Wipro Limited today posted a net profit of Rs 880 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2008, a growth of 3 per cent, as against Rs 856 crore registered in the corresponding quarter previous year.

The company's revenue for the period stood at Rs 5700 crore, up 32 per cent, when compared to Rs 4319 crore posted for the corresponding quarter a year ago.

The company posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 3283 crore for the financial year 2008, an increase of 12 per cent. Revenue grew by 33 per cent to Rs 19957 crore.

Wipro's Global IT Business revenue for FY 2008 stood at Rs 1364 crore, showing a growth of 23 per cent.

The company’s revenue from the combined IT business was at $4.3 billion.

For Q1 08-09 the company expects its combined IT Services revenue to be approximately $1,060 million.

Corresponding base number for Q4 08 and Q1 07 for the Combined IT Services business was $1,031.5 million and $ 779.1 million respectively.

The company's revenue for the financial year 2008 from India, Middle East and Asia Pacific business grew by 51 per cent YoY to Rs 3746 crore.

“India, Middle East and Asia Pacific IT business has leveraged the domain and solutioning capability of Global IT business in several of the large deals. We are seeing huge potential in India and Middle East with considerable investments being planning by customers,” said Azim Premji, chairman, Wipro.

During Q4 the company added 29 new customers.

After the end of Q4, the company has 14 clients in the over $50 million category.

“Deal pipeline looks healthy. We have two teams focusing on large deals. Even the domestic deal sizes are getting bigger,” said Suresh Vaswani, president, Wipro Infotech.

"We gave salary hikes to our onsite employees, which had an impact of 100 basis points on our margins. We improved utilization, margin expansion in acquisitions and other operating parameters, which significantly offset the adverse impact of onsite salary increase," said Suresh Senapaty, chief financial officer of Wipro.

Senapaty added that the company’s margins were affected by 3.6 per cent due to the appreciation of rupee.

The acquisition of Infocrossing impacted Wipro’s margins by 55-60 basis points, said Senapaty.

Wipro acquired Infocrossing in August 2007 for $600 million.

Senapaty also said Infocrossing margins were expanded by 450 basis points.

Talking about fiscal 08-09 Senapaty said that the company aims to expand or hold the margin in FY 08-09.

Wipro had 82,122 employees as of March 31, 2008, which included 61,844 employees in IT Services business and 20,278 employees in BPO business. This represents a net addition of 2,290 employees comprised of 1,919 in IT Services business and 371 people in BPO business for the quarter.

“Our recruitment for the current year will be biased towards freshers,” said Pratik Kumar, executive vice president, HR.