Infosys profit rises 10.4% for Q4 on boost from contract value

Infosys, India's second-largest information technology (IT) company, on Friday reported a 10.4% jump in profits for the quarter ended March, thanks to the firm bagging high-value contracts.
 
The Bengaluru-based firm’s operations chief Pravin Rao said that Infosys had doubled its total contract value (TCV) year-on-year. He said that the company had signed deals generating a TCV of $6.28 billion in 2018-19, out of which $1.57 billion was signed in the last three months of the financial year. In 2017-18, Infosys had closed deals worth $3 billion. 
 
Net profit for the quarter stood at Rs 4,074 crore, up from Rs 3,690 crore for the corresponding period last year. 
 
In terms of net sales, the company reported a year-on-year increase of 19.1% at Rs 21,539 crore. It had posted net sales of Rs 18,083 crore for the same quarter in the previous fiscal. But quarter-on-quarter growth was flat at 0.6%.
 
Speaking after the results were announced, Salil Parekh, Infosys’ chief executive and managing director, said that the company’s planned investments had started yielding benefits and the firm was looking forward to deploying various measures of operational efficiencies. 
 
“We have completed the first year of our transformation journey with strong results on multiple dimensions including revenue growth, performance of digital portfolio, large-deal wins and client metrics,” said Parekh, who took over as CEO in January last year. 
 
The company said that the digital segment accounted for 40% of revenue for the three-month period and 33.8% ($1.03 billion) of the total revenue for the financial year ended March 31, which stood at Rs 82,675 crore. The firm had posted a total consolidated revenue of Rs 70,522 crore for the financial year ended March 2018. This translates to a year-on-year growth of 17.2%. 

“Realisation per billed employee was steady, which reflects increasing usage of automation in core services and faster growth in newer digital services,” said Rao. 

Infosys reported Rs 15,404 crore in consolidated net profit for 2018-19, registering a 3.9% decline from Rs 16,029 crore for 2017-18.
 
Rao also spoke about the high attrition rate of the company and said that it was deliberating on bringing down the numbers. During the quarter ended June 2018, Infosys had reached an attrition rate of 20.6%. The attrition came down to 17.8% in the December quarter before rising to 18.3% in the March quarter.
 
The board recommended a final dividend of Rs 10.50 per share. “Dividend per share has increased 4.5% in 2018-19. During the quarter, we completed the payout of special dividend in January and initiated the share buyback programme,” said Nilanjan Roy, finance chief of Infosys.