By Vibhuti Sharma
BENGALURU (Reuters) – Infosys Ltd on Wednesday raised its annual revenue growth forecast, after the Indian software services firm posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit, buoyed by growth in client demand for its digital services during the pandemic.
The company, co-founded by billionaire NR Narayana Murthy, revised its annual revenue forecast to between 2% and 3% in constant currency terms, from an earlier expectation of revenue being flat to up 2%.
Bengaluru-based Infosys, which provides services such as cloud, data and analytics to companies across the world, said it will also roll out salary increases, promotions across all levels effective Jan. 1.
“Infosys results today … signifies how important it has become for enterprises to invest in IT to weather any disruptive situation – be it pandemic or an economic recession,” Forrester analyst Ashutosh Sharma said.
Infosys reported quarterly operating margin of 25.4%, up from 21.7% last year, following rivals Tata Consultancy Services that posted a 2.2% rise in operating margin to 26.2% while Wipro Ltd saw its margin rise to 19.2% for the period.
Consolidated net profit for Infosys in the September quarter climbed 26.6% to 48.45 billion rupees ($661.35 million). Analysts on average had expected a profit of 45.19 billion rupees, according to Refinitiv data.
The company’s upbeat profit this quarter comes in contrast to peers TCS and Wipro, which saw their profit drop 7.1% and 3.4%, respectively.
Revenue for Infosys https://www.bseindia.com/xml-data/corpfiling/AttachLive/5384f45c-e7a4-4b5a-bf22-19c63d36129d.pdf, which counts chocolate maker Hershey Co and networking gear maker Cisco among its clients, climbed to 245.70 billion rupees from 226.29 billion rupees in the quarter. This compares with analysts’ estimate of 241.91 billion rupees.
During the quarter, Infosys had a gross addition of 96 clients, in line with 96 client additions last year.
($1 = 73.2588 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Vibhuti Sharma and Philip George in Bengaluru, Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)