Wipro shares tumble 8% as revenue lags

Oct 23, 2013,

MUMBAI: Shares in India\'s third largest IT outsourcer Wipro slumped more than eight percent on Wednesday, a day after it announced modest revenue growth that lagged rivals, analysts said.



Wipro hit a day\'s low of 471.55 rupees at the Bombay Stock Exchange, down 8.41 percent before paring their losses to sit at 491.30 rupees in late morning trade.



The firm said Tuesday that net profit rose 29 percent year-on-year to 19.32 billion rupees ($309 million) in July-September.





But it reported IT services revenues of $1.63 billion for the three months, a 2.7 percent rise from the previous quarter -- weaker than rivals such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and HCL Technologies.



\"I am not too enthused by Wipro\'s IT revenue growth. They may take a while to catch up to the industry levels,\" said Ankita Somani, analyst with Mumbai\'s Angel Broking.



In the same quarter, TCS reported a near six percent jump in dollar-based revenues from the previous three months, Infosys saw 3.8 percent growth and HCL around 3.6 percent.



Somani said the next two quarters could see \"soft\" earnings growth for most IT firms owing to international holidays at the year-end and delays by US and Britain-based clients in fixing new budgets for IT-related services for 2014.



Investors have therefore started to sell shares in most of India\'s IT firms.



Wipro has forecast a rise of between 1.8 and 3.6 percent in IT revenues for the current three months to December.



India\'s outsourcing industry carries out a wide range of jobs for Western firms such as answering calls from bank customers, processing insurance claims and developing software.
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