IT services major Wipro delivered a mixed performance in its fourth-quarter results, with net profit matching market expectations even as margins took a beating.
The Azim Premji-owned company, however, said it expects a better show in the long term: it forecast a doubling of revenue to $15 billion by 2020.
Wipro has also put together a six-point strategy to steer the company towards the growth path, alongside its peers.
The company also announced a buyback of shares at ₹625 per share (a 4 per cent premium over Wednesday’s price) and expects to mop up 4 crore shares, accounting for 1.6 per cent of the total paid-up equity. It has earmarked cash of up to ₹2,500 crore for the buyback. The promoters own 73.34 per cent of the company.
The company has projected 1-3 per cent ($1.9-1.94 billion) revenue growth in the first quarter of 2016-17, largely in line with its forecast in the same period last year.
Wipro’s consolidated net profit fell 1.6 per cent to ₹2,235 crore for the fourth quarter on a year-on-year basis, while total income rose 6.1 per cent to ₹13,741 crore for the same period. Margins for the company’s IT services fell 10 basis points to 20.1 per cent on a sequential basis and 2 percentage points on a year-on-year basis.
“Softness in Energy & Utilities and banking in Europe were some of the headwinds in this quarter,” CEO Abidali Neemuchwala said at a press conference.
An analyst with Kotak Securities said the company’s revenue guidance for the first quarter indicates marginal growth on an organic basis, which was disappointing.
“Wipro continues to be impacted by the lack of scale-up in large accounts, apart from the continuing challenges in the Energy / Telecom segments,” Dipen Shah, Senior Vice-President & Head of Private Client Group Research, Kotak Securities, said.