Firstsource centre in US in early FY15

New US centre to have 300-500 employees

Firstsource Solutions, provider of business process management services, plans to open a centre in the US by March, to cater to its existing clients.

“This is going to be a customer management centre for the telecom and media vertical which will be operational in the early part of FY15,” Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Rajesh Subramaniam told Business Standard on Friday.

He, however, refrained from divulging details regarding the investment.

In the December quarter, the company expanded operations in the Philippines with  a second delivery centre in Cebu to cater to the banking, financial services and insurance segment.

“The centre has 75-100 employees, to be increased to perhaps 300-400 in 2014,” said Subramaniam.

The company had laid off 444 in the quarter ended December 31, mostly from India operations in the Tier-II and -III cities as a one-time rationalisation move. As on December 31, its employee strength was 29,946. “This has been a year of consolidation for us and there were some non-profitable accounts we exited. It was a one-time move.” Firstsource reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 48.3 crore in the December quarter, up 17 per cent from a year ago and up eight per cent from a quarter ago.

Though the company’s sequential revenue growth was flat, on a year-on-year basis company’s net sales rose 12.1 percent to Rs 799.8 crore in the period under review.

Third quarter is seasonally a weak quarter for IT companies, yet we have managed to maintain flat performance on sequential basis despite the consolidation that we carried out, said Subramaniam.

“We see good growth rate in FY15 and are expecting an EBITDA growth of 150-200 basis points going ahead,”he said.

Company's operating earnings before interest and tax in December quarter stood at Rs 74.2 crore, up 7.4 percent quarter-on-quarter and up 44.6 percent on year-on-year basis.

Firstsource Group USA, the wholly owned subsidiary of Firstsource Solutions successfully made its third quarterly principal repayment of $11.25 million on its outstanding debt on December 31, 2013.

Firstsource services to the healthcare, telecom and media and banking and financial services industries. The company has delivery model with operations in India, Ireland, Philippines, Sri Lanka, UK and U.S