UPDATE 2-Wipro Q4 net up, but slowest growth in 5 years
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BANGALORE, April 18 (Reuters) - Wipro Ltd (WIPR.BO) (WIT.N), 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.
Wipro on Friday 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 percent to 8.75 billion rupees ($220 million) from 8.6 billion rupees a year ago.
A Reuters poll had forecast a mean net profit of 8.8 billion rupees for Wipro, which counts Cisco (CSCO.O), Nortel NT.N, and Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) 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.
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.
NOTE OF CAUTION
India's No.2 software exporter, Infosys Technologies (INFY.BO), on Tuesday posted a near-10 percent rise in profit and gave a confident medium-term outlook, but sounded a note of caution on its near-term prospects.
Fifth-ranked software service exporter, HCL Technologies Ltd (HCLT.BO), increased its quarterly profit by 3.2 percent, and kept its full-year outlook for revenue growth of 35 percent. Continued...
