HCL Tech

HCL Tech posted a decent set of numbers for its fourth quarter ended 30th June 2015 (The company follows 1sy July to 30th June year ending) but the disappointment was huge on account of the dip in margins.

For Q4, the company posted a 6% (QoQ) rise in net profit at Rs.1783 crore in a 5.5% rise in revenue at Rs.9777 crore. Even on dollar terms, earnings were good – dollar revenue rose over 3% at US$1538 million and profit rose 3T at US$279 million. EBIT margin came in at 20.1%, much lower than expectations of 21.80% and QoQ, down from 21.33%. The margins had dipped QoQ by 250 bps in March (Q3) quarter too and now this drop again in Q4 – the word on the street is that this means the road ahead could be stormier.

During the quarter, North America grew 5.1% (QoQ), Europe slumped, as expected, from 4.4% to 0.1% and Rest of the World showed a contraction of -0.1% from 10.6%. In terms of its verticals, revenue from application services segment increased 1.4% v/s 0.8% (QoQ) but engineering & R&D segment revenue growth declined 1.9% v/s growth of 4.6%. In Q4, it added one new client in US$100  million category, 5 clients in US$ 40 million category, 10 clients in US$ 10 million category, 24 clients in US$ 5 million category and 47 clients in US$ 1 million category.

In terms of employee data, attrition in IT services rose from 16.2% to 16.5% and that in business services declined to 7.7% from 8.3%. Blended utilisation (including trainees) rose to 83.5% v/s 81.9% in Q3. During the quarter, employee count came down by 12,493 to total tall now at 91.691 employees.

The company ended FY15 with a 14% rise in net profit at Rs.7254 crore and a 13% increase in revenue at Rs.37,061 crore. USA markets for the year showed a 14% growth and Europe grew 19%.