StatsGuru: 28-October-2013

How the weak rupee helped India's IT sector do well

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The information technology industry has done well out of the weakness of the rupee.

The big IT firms are shown in Table 1. Clearly, TCS is by far the market leader - and it is rewarded by a price-earnings ratio well above the average for the sector, as Table 2 shows.

It is worth noting, however, that P-E ratios for Indian firms are largely below those for many of their counterparts in the United States, as shown in Table 3.

This, perhaps, reflects doubts about their business models; US companies which appear to be trapped in dead-end business models, like IBM and Microsoft, have P-E ratios well below the average.

Meanwhile, the Indian markets have rewarded IT with some major price increases over the year, as Table 4 makes clear; the rupee's weakness since July is responsible for part of that, it seems.

Certainly, they have seen robust revenue growth recently, as Table 5 makes clear. Profit growth has also increased - but so have employee costs.