HCL Tech is showing a lot of activity today. The stock, which had closed yesterday at Rs.1409, opened higher today morning at Rs. 1446 and went on to hit an intra day high at Rs.1455. It remains currently in the green, up over 1%.

The stock has spurted up encouraged by its set of very good numbers for its third quarter ended 31^st March 2014. It posted better-than-expected 8.5% (YoY) and 59% (QoQ) rise in consolidated net profit at Rs.1624 crore. Revenue rose 2% (YoY) at Rs.8401 crore. In US $ terms, its net profit grew 9% (QoQ) at $264 million on a 3% rise in revenue at $1361 million.

The good news is that company has been consistently hiking its EBIT margins and for the tenth straight time, margins came at 24.6%, which is a 7.1% (QoQ) and 44.5% (YoY). This is one of its margins ever. This good performance was despite the forex loss of US$23 million during the quarter though it was lesser than US$25 million in Q2.

In terms of its verticals, BFSI grew 7% (QoQ) and manufacturing grew 2%. The sector which contributes maximum to the revenue is infrastructure services and this segment rose 5%. The only segment to show a degrowth was business services. In terms of geographical growth, USA growth was flat at 0.4% (QoQ), Europe grew 5% while RoW increased 11%.

During the quarter, the company added 8291 employees (gross) and 1858 (net), taking the total headcount to 90.190. Attrition in IT services rose to 16.9% sequentially and utilization was one of the best, vis-à-vis TCS and Infosys at 84.2%.  The company added 2 clients each in $50 million and $30 million categories during this quarter.