LTI shares rise 7% after co reports 21% growth in Q4 revenue, FY20 growth at 15%

Mid-tier information technology (IT) services firm Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI) reported a 13% year-on-year rise in net profit to Rs 428 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2020. The better-than-expected results saw the company's shares on the Bombay Stock Exchange surge by almost 7% on Wednesday.

In terms of revenue, the Mumbai-headquartered firm saw a 21% growth to Rs 3,012 crore for the fourth quarter of the financial year 2020, compared to the corresponding period a year ago.

For the full financial year, the company witnessed a 15% growth to Rs 10,879 crore in revenue as against the previous financial year. Its FY20 net profit stood at Rs 1,521 crore, almost flat at 0.3% growth over FY19.

"We rose to the challenge of unparalleled global pandemic exceeding our customer expectations. Our comprehensive digital transformation capabilities and execution have helped us to post double-digit revenue growth during FY 20," said Sanjay Jalona, CEO and managing director of LTI.

Part of the engineering conglomerate Larsen and Toubro, the company said that it had signed two large deals over $100 million in total contract value during Q4. "With strong order wins, healthy revenue momentum and customer-centric growth strategy, we will confront near term demand challenges," Jalona added.

A few days ago, another L&T group IT firm LTTS also reported an 11% growth in annual sales. 

Bengaluru-based mid-tier IT firm Mindtree, which was acquired by L&T during the last financial year, reported 6.6% revenue growth year-on-year for the financial year ending March 2020 while registering a full year topline growth of 8.7%. 

LTI did not specify the likely impact of Covid-19 on its top line for the Q1 of the current financial year.

The $190 billion Indian IT services industry, on the whole, is expected to see a decline, despite top-tier firms being optimistic about recovery during the second half of the current financial year.

Last week, technology research firm Gartner said companies across the world will cut expenditure on IT by 8% in 2020, with the overall IT budget expected to fall to $3.4 trillion due to the Covid-19 crisis. This is in contrast to its January prediction when the firm had projected that IT spending would grow to $3.9 trillion globally in 2020.

In March this year, Strassen, Luxembourg-based LTI subsidiary Syncordis SA had signed a new deal with Standard Chartered Bank to transform its wealth platform.

In February, LTI had expanded its technology partnership with Swedish fuel company OKQ8 AB Scandinavia to provide IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), security services, application operations, maintenance and development services.