'Earnings fail; but manufacturing, BFSE growth a +ve'

Gaurang Shah, AVP, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services evaluates the Infosys Q3 earnings and its outlook in an exclusive chat with Krishna Merchant for Smart Investor.

Have the December 2010 quarter results of Infosys Technologies met your expectation?

The results did not meet expectations and there was a slight disappointment. Sequentially, we expected the company to report a bottomline growth of 3% and a topline growth of 3.5%.

Will the company be able to sustain volume growth going forward?

I expect the fourth quarter to be much better. Infosys has always given a conservative guidance as far as future is concerned.

However, one important point to note is that there is growth in manufacturing and BFSI segment. Since telecom sector has been performing well, one cannot expect orders from the telecom sector to come to Infosys.

Overall, we maintain a positive bias on Infosys and put a buy rating on the stock close to around Rs 3200-3240. We maintain price target of Rs 3540 from a long-term perspective, say 12 months.

Click here for the full interview.