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Bangalore: Wipro Ltd, India's third-largest software services exporter, posted its slowest quarterly earnings growth in about 5 years, and said it was cautious about its near-term prospects because of global market uncertainty.
On Friday Wipro forecast its combined IT services revenue - including those of its India and Asia-Pacific IT services and product arms - would rise to $1.06 billion in April-June from $1.03 billion in January-March. "The global economic outlook has changed significantly since the beginning of the calendar year," Chairman Azim Premji said.
"We look at fiscal 2009 with cautious optimism. The market situation is changing rapidly, which has a bearing on our immediate business dynamics. Given the uncertainty in the environment, we remain cautious, but resilient," he said.
The Indian stock market is closed on Friday for a local holiday. Trading resumes on Monday.
Wipro, which offers IT solutions such as systems integration, software application development and back-office services, said January-March net profit rose 1.7 per cent to Rs8.75 billion ($220 million) from Rs8.6 billion a year ago.
A Reuters poll had forecast a mean net profit of Rs8.8 billion for Wipro, which counts Cisco, Nortel, and Credit Suisse among its clients.
Wipro said wage increases in the March quarter impacted margins by 100 basis points. It added 29 new clients in the quarter, and won three multi-year, multi-million dollar deals.
Deal pipeline
The deal pipeline looked good, Chief Financial Officer Suresh Senapaty said, but there could be delays.
"Customers are talking about flattish to maybe slightly lower budgets, but they are all wanting to do more offshoring."
"Since the decision-making could get delayed, given the uncertain situation, we think most of the fructification would happen after 3-6 months," he said.
India's No.2 software exporter, Infosys Technologies, on Tuesday posted a near-10 per cent rise in profit and gave a confident medium-term outlook, but sounded a note of caution on its near-term prospects.
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