Infosys made light of a seasonally weak quarter to post net profit growth of 16.2 per cent, at ₹3,597 crore, for the fourth quarter, over the same period a year ago. Revenue grew 23.4 per cent to ₹16,550 crore over the same period.
Along the way, the software services company ticked all the right boxes, indicating that its first non-founder CEO, Vishal Sikka, had firmly put it on the road to recovery. Infosys beat market expectations for the fourth straight quarter and issued a 11.8-13.8 per cent revenue guidance for 2016-17, above industry expectations. Attrition was kept down at 17.3 per cent in the fourth quarter.
“I am proud of what out teams have achieved this quarter and in the year…And, yet, despite these heartening results, they are still based on metrics of the past, of the way the industry has been…We are still very much at the beginning of this journey,” Sikka said in a statement.
Wage hike Infosys also announced that its offshore employees will get an average hike of 6-12 per cent while onsite employees will get a 2 per cent wage increase. This could be the benchmark for other IT companies, which will be announcing their results from next week.
The board has recommended a final dividend of ₹14.25 per share for the financial year. Three senior executives, Mohit Joshi, Ravi Kumar S and Sandeep Dadlani, have been elevated as presidents.
Visa issue Sikka, 48, also made it clear during the press conference that he was all for IT companies becoming independent of visas, a view expressed recently by former Infosys chairman and co-founder NR Narayana Murthy. “Our view is to become independent of visas; to hire locally. I’m myself a local hire in the US,” he said.
An analyst with Gartner said he was confident that the company will improve its performance further. “The last fiscal has marked a turnaround for the company; it seems to be getting execution right and has aligned better with what its clients need,” said Arup Roy, Research Director, Gartner.