With Infosys kicking off the Q4 earnings season on Thursday, the focus will now shift to the other two major IT services companies — TCS and Wipro. India's largest software services exporter, TCS, will declare its results on April 18 while the third-largest exporter, Wipro, will come out with its performance on April 25 after the conclusion of the two-day board meeting.
Wipro had given a revenue guidance of $1,922-1,941 million for the fourth quarter (Q4) after reporting $1,902.8 million for the December 2016 (Q3) quarter.
IT stocks were faring far lower on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) on Thursday in comparison to the 30-scrip benchmark index, Sensex. The BSE IT index was down 1.72 percent at around 10.21 am in sharp contrast to the Sensex that was trading 0.15 percent lower at 29,599.
Wipro shares were trading 1.55 percent lower at Rs 493 apiece while TCS was down 2.39 percent to Rs 2,337. Tech Mahindra and HCL Technologies were also trading in the red, down 0.99 percent and 1.05 percent, respectively.
Industry body Nasscom had estimated revenue growth for the ~$150 billion Indian IT industry to come in the range of 8.6 percent, lower from the earlier 8-10 percent projection in November 2016 and 10-12 percent in February last year.
Nasscom deferred its growth forecast for the next fiscal (FY2018) at its February summit to May, citing global uncertainty and US President Donald Trump's policies to defer projections for FY 2018.
"This (the postponement) has been attributed to global macro uncertainty, cross-currency fluctuations, structural shift in the industry, political volatility, headwinds in healthcare around the repealment in the US of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and lack of firming up of discretionary spending by customers, especially in the critical BFSI sector (which accounts for 40%-45% of industry revenues)," Girish Pai, analyst at brokerage Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities, had written in his note in February this year.
As already reported, Infosys' Q4 (March 2017) net profit was Rs 3,603 crore, a marginal rise of 0.2 percent from its December 2016 quarter net profit of Rs 3,597 crore but a fall of 2.8 percent from Rs 3,708 crore for the March 2016 quarter.
He had also expected Nasscom to make a growth projection of 6-8 percent for the current fiscal (FY2018), close to the actual dollar revenue guidance of 6.5-8.5 percent given by Infosys.
"The company's outlook (consolidated) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018, under IFRS is as follows: Revenues are expected to grow 6.5%-8.5% in constant currency," Infosys said on Thursday.
