Wipro on Tuesday met street expectations when it posted a 37.7 per cent growth in net profits for the March quarter at Rs 2,494 crore. The country’s third largest IT services player also announced a Rs 10,500 crore share buyback programme.

However, there was some disappointment as the company projected revenues from its IT services business to come in the range of $2,046-2,087 million compared with the revenues of $2,075.5 million in the fourth quarter — a range of a fall of 1 per cent (for revenues of $2,046 million) to a growth of around 0.5 per cent (for revenues of $2,087 million).

The company announced a share repurchase programme, which will be it's second in about 15 months. Wipro will buy 32.3 crore shares from its shareholders at Rs 325 apiece. Wipro had undertaken an Rs 2,500crore buyback in 2016 and another Rs 11,000 crore in November-December 2017.

The price of Rs 325 represents a premium of almost 16 per cent to the closing price of the Wipro stock on Tuesday.

“Our teams have executed well on our strategy which has resulted in consistent improvement of year-on-year 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,” Abidali Z. Neemuchwala, CEO and executive director, said.

The quarter saw Wipro’s revenues rise 9 per cent to Rs 15,006 crore from Rs 13,769 crore in the year-ago period.

Wipro’s operating margins came in at 19 per cent, which showed a growth of 4 per cent compared with the same period of last year. For the year, revenues stood at Rs 58,584.5 crore, a rise of around 7.5 per cent over the previous fiscal.

Responding to a query on the IT services revenue guidance, Neemuchwala said this was largely due to the seasonality element as the first quarter was usually weak.

Wipro will move into a positive growth trajectory from the second quarter on the back of a strong order book and deal pipeline.\

The Telegraph

Account breach

The breach of a few employee accounts will not have any “effect” on financials of the company, Wipro COO B.M. Bhanumurthy said on Tuesday.

The IT major said a few of its employee accounts had been affected by an “advanced phishing campaign”, and it has taken remedial steps — including retaining an independent forensic firm — to contain and mitigate any potential impact.