Infosys reports 34.5% growth of net profit in Q1

Bangalore, July 11 (UNI) Software major Infosys today reported a flat sequential growth for quarter one of the current fiscal, though year on year it witnessed a 25.1 per cent increase in revenue at Rs 3,773 crore, with net profit up by 34.5 per cent at Rs 1,079 crore.

Announcing the results, Company CEO and MC S Gopalakrishnan said the Infosys had lost around Rs 287 crore during the quarter in view of the appreciation of the rupee over the US Dollar by seven per cent. When the year began the value of US dollar was Rs 43.10, but at the end of the quarter it had depreciated to Rs 40.58.

Consequently, the guidance for the year had also been brought down by six per cent at Rs 16,238 crore to Rs 16,433 crore, with the year on year growh expected to be between 16.9 per cent and 18.3 per cent. This would result in the company losing around Rs 1,000 crore as of now, Mr Gopalakrishnan said.

Chief Financial Officer V Balakrishnan said that despite the impact of the rupee aprpreciation, ''our robust and flexible operating and financial model enabled us to maintain our net margins while absorbing the impact of apprciating currency, higher wages and visa costs''. The total impact of these factors was around 7.5 per cent on the operating costs. However this had been offset marginally by hedging operations and lower loss suffered by subsidiaries, he added.

The company had looked to other countries for expanding operations besides China and Australia, where it has own subsidiaries. The company has an offshore centre in Manila with 400 employees and it would also be opening up in Malaysia and Mexico, Company Director and Head HR and Research and development T V Mohandas Pai said.

With a staff strength of over 75,000, Infosys had employees belonging to 65 nationalities, he added.

Mr Gopalakrishnan said the company revised upwards its employment figures for the year which would now be 26,000 as against 24,500 announced in April.

He said 99.5 per cent of the business during the first quarter was from repeat orders. It added 35 new companies and the total number of live clients was 509.

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UNI