Infosys shares staged a comeback on Tuesday, shrugging off a spate of bad news that began on August 13 when the company lost a multi-million project of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and later on Monday, after it admitted to sacking "underperformers".
The Infosys stock opened marginally higher from its Monday close of Rs. 1,015.40 and rose to an intraday high of Rs. 1,041 before closing at Rs. 1,039.25, a gain of 2.35 percent.
Meanwhile, continuing with the spell of bad news, the company was told that its proposal to set up an IT SEZ in West Bengal has been rejected since the state did not make the due recommendation.
"After deliberations, the board rejected the proposal due to lack of recommendation from the state government," PTI quoted from the minutes of the meeting held on August 12 by the Board of Approval (BoA), headed by commerce secretary Rita Teaotia.
The company's proposal was to set up an SEZ in South 24 Paragnas spread over 20 hectares.
Read: Infosys denies reports of 500 layoffs; says only underperformers asked to leave
Bengaluru-based Infosys will be hosting analysts' meet on Wednesday (August 24), as informed by the company in a regulatory filing to the BSE on Tuesday.
The outcome of the meet could well decide the future course of the share price of India's second-largest IT software services exporter.
In a note on Tuesday, brokerage Nirmal Bang said that a range of issues would be in focus, especially the company's take on performance in the second half of the current fiscal and how things pan out in view of global headwinds, especially in Europe after Brexit.
Here are some of the key issues to watch out for, according to the brokerage:
Problems faced in executing its consultancy projects in the healthcare vertical in Q1,
Reasons for attrition including top-level exits,
Progress on automation — the benefits from it had been pushed to FY2018 from 2H, FY2017; whether this timeline is on track or more pushback is likely,
Whether the company will continue its "pricing to win" strategy or has shelved it, and
Reasons for its new services meeting growth targets in H2, FY2017.
The BSE Sensex closed below the psychological mark of 28,000 at 27,990 while the NSE Nifty also ended almost flat at 8,632.
Along with Infosys, top Sensex gainers included TCS, Asian Paints, Bharti Airtel and Wipro.
The BSE IT index closed with a gain of 1.82 percent at 10,613.
