Wipro Chairman Azim Premji said the company will continue to look at enhancing shareholder value and would consider a buyback.
Addressing investors at its AGM, Premji said the software major has completed a bonus issue and will consider a buyback at its board meeting on July 20. “We have a philosophy of providing regular and stable payout to investors and prudently evaluate capital allocation decisions, in the interest of building long term stakeholder value,” Premji added.
The founder and chairman along with his family own just over 73 per cent in India’s third largest software exporter.
Premji also sounded confident about the company’s prospects especially in a volatile macro-economic environment and the changing needs of its clients. “Technology spending in ‘digital’ is continuing to happen and even in a volatile economic environment clients are still looking to spend in technology as it becomes a differentiator in business,” he said. “Over the last year, we saw further evidence of a drastic change in expectations and experiences of consumers and business models. Digital is the central element driving this change. We believe that IT service companies are key to deliver digital to enterprises,” Premji said.
Premji’s comments are coming at a time when gross revenues of the company grew by 7.4 per cent in the fiscal year 2017, largely in line with analyst expectations but less than industry body Nasscom’s 8.6 per cent growth for the Indian IT sector.
Software exporters have increasingly start to opt for buybacks as shareholders demand for higher returns in the midst of growth slowdown.
Digital trainingAmidst the rising concern of layoffs in the $155-billion IT sector, Premji said that Wipro would continue to train its employees and invest in new technologies. “Last year, we trained over 39,000 employees in digital technologies,” he said.
Our investments in emerging technology spaces of artificial intelligence, data analytics and digital resulted in 603 patents last year, he added.