Wipro Reports Rs 2,483.5 Crore Profit In Q4, Approves Rs 10,500 Crore Share Buyback

Wipro, the country's third largest software services company, on Tuesday reported a net profit of Rs 2,483.5 crore for the quarter ended March 31. That marked a 1.07 per cent fall from its net profit of Rs 2,510.4 crore registered for the previous quarter. In a regulatory filing post-market hours on Tuesday, Wipro said its revenue stood at Rs 15,006.30 crore for the quarter, a decrease of 0.35 per cent compared to Rs 15,059.5 crore the previous quarter. Wipro missed analyst estimates compiled by Reuters for fourth-quarter profit partly hurt by a rise in expenses and forecast weak growth at its biggest business segment.

(Also read: Wipro investigating potential breach of employee accounts)

Shares in Wipro closed 2.12 per cent lower at Rs 281.60 apiece on the BSE, underperforming the Sensex and Nifty which logged fresh record highs.

Wipro's revenue from IT services stood at Rs 14,586.5 crore versus Rs 14,665.60 crore in the previous quarter.

The board of directors of Wipro at its meeting held today also approved a share buyback proposal of up to Rs 10,500 crore representing 5.35 per cent of total paid-up equity share capital. Wipro's management will buy back 32.30 crore shares at Rs 325 apiece.

In dollar terms, Wipro's revenue from IT services segment rose 1.4 per cent to $2,075.5 million while operating margin came in at 19, an increase of 4.4 per cent (YoY), Wipro said in a press release.

Going ahead Wipro has guided for revenue from IT services business to be in the range of $2,046 million to $2,087 million. This translates to a sequential growth of minus 1.0 to 1.0 per cent excluding the impact of the divestment of our Workday and Cornerstone On Demand business which was concluded in the quarter ended March 31, 2019, the press release added.

Abidali Z. Neemuchwala, CEO and Executive Director said, "Our teams have executed well on our strategy which has resulted in consistent improvement of YoY growth each quarter. We have built a strong foundation for growth on the back of healthy order book and continued investments in big bet areas of Digital, Cyber security, Engineering services and Cloud. Our customers find these investments relevant as part of their digital transformation and IT Operations landscape modernization, enabling us to win in the market."

In the quarter ended March 31, 2019 Wipro won large deals globally which included a North American financial services company's contract to Wipro to transform its security products suite.

A technology company selected Wipro to design and deliver a new level of experience for support services enterprise agility and modernizing core IT systems by leveraging Wipro HOLMESTM and third party cloud provider among other deals, the Bengaluru-based company added.