Infosys gains nearly 1% as board to consider share buyback on Thursday

The company's board will consider a proposal for buyback of fully paid-up equity shares at its meeting on October 13, 2022 and also announce its September quarter earnings.

Shares of Infosys gained nearly a per cent at Rs 1,474 on the BSE in Tuesday’s intra-day trade after the company said its board will consider share buyback proposal on Thursday along with September quarter results (Q2FY23).

The board of the company will consider a proposal for buyback of fully paid-up equity shares of the company at its meeting to be held on October 13, 2022, Infosys said in an exchange filing on Monday after market hours.

At 09:18 AM, Infosys traded almost flat Rs 1,465, after hitting a low of Rs 1,460 in intra-day trade so far. In comparison, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 0.22 per cent at 57,863.

Earlier, On September 16, Infosys announced that the meeting of the board of directors of the company was scheduled on 13/10/2022, inter alia, to consider and approve the financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2022 and interim dividend, if any.

During the five-year period of fiscal 2020-24, Infosys expects to return approximately 85 per cent of the free cash flows generated through a combination of semi-annual dividends and / or share buyback and / or special dividends, subject to applicable laws and requisite approvals, if any.

Meanwhile, according to ICICI Securities, Infosys’s revenue growth momentum is expected to continue on strong deal execution while margins are expected to improve sequentially as wage hike is behind now.

Infosys is expected to register 5 per cent quarter on quarter (QoQ) growth in constant currency (CC) led by continued momentum from financial services, retail, communication, energy and manufacturing, despite it is witnessing weakness in some pockets of BFSI and Retail. Cross currency headwinds of 150 bps would lead to 3.5 per cent QoQ growth in dollar term. Rupee revenues are expected to increase 6.5 per cent QoQ aided by rupee depreciation, the brokerage firm said.

“We factor in EBIT margin expansion of only 40 bps QoQ despite wage hike impact already taken in Q1, due to continued high attrition which is expected to increase backfilling costs and continued higher subcontractor costs which likely mitigate few of the tailwinds in terms utilisation improvement, pyramid optimisation etc. We expect PAT to increase around 11.1 per cent QoQ,” ICICI Securities said in result preview. Keys thing to watch are any change in revenue growth guidance of 14-16 per cent in CC for FY23E and 21-23 per cent EBIT margin band, it added.