TCS net up 23 percent, revenue hits Rs.1 lakh crore

India's top IT company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Monday reported a 23 percent jump in its net profit for fiscal 2015-16, at Rs.24,215 crore. The company's revenue for the year, based on global accounting norms, was up 14.8 percent at Rs.108,646 crore.

The company, which faces a $940 million fine in the US in a software case, said its net profit for the last quarter of 2015-16 was up as much as 64.4 percent at Rs.6,341 crore (year-on-year) and revenue jumped 17.5 percent to Rs.28,449 crore.

On a sequential basis, Q4 revenue was up 4 percent and net profit up 3.8 percent from third quarter.

In dollar terms, net income for fiscal under review was up 14.8 percent to $3.69 billion and revenue 7.1 percent up to $16.54 billion.

Similarly, for Q4, net income grew 50.9 percent over same period last year and 1.3 percent sequentially to $938 million and revenue 7.9 percent and 1.5 percent quarter-on-quarter to $4.2 billion in dollar terms.

Operating margin was 26.5 percent for fiscal and 26.1 percent for Q4, while operating profit grew 26.3 percent to Rs.28,790 crore annually and by a whopping 87 percent to Rs.7,412 crore quarterly.

The city-based global software major declared its financial results after the close of trading hours on Indian bourses. The blue-chip company's scrip had ended with a marginal fall of Rs.0.75 or 0.03 percent at Rs.2,522.40 on the BSE.

The robust results come just a few days after the Indian IT bellwether was fined $940 million by a US Federal Court in Wisconsin for allegedly stealing software information. Tata Consultancy has since denied any wrong-doing and says it intends to appeal against the verdict in higher courts.

"Our core portfolio performed strongly in a seasonally weak fourth quarter driven by strong volume growth (3.2 percent), led by BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance), retail and manufacturing sectors," TCS chief executive N. Chandrasekaran said in a statement here.

Revenue from India business crossed $1 billion and $2.3 billion in digital technologies, which is a 52 percent growth in constant currency. The growth was led by banking and financial services, life sciences and manufacturing.

"Our investment in building high impact digital platforms is paying off, resulting in $2.3 billion in digital revenue. We are building the right talent pool by training about 120,000 TCSers in FY16 in 400 digital technologies to help customers drive adoption of digital in their enterprise," Chandrasekaran said.

The company added eight clients each in $100-million and $50-millon deals, 11 in $20-million wins and 37 in $10-million contracts during the fiscal.

"We will continue to invest in developing 'digital' talent and launch new products in emerging areas, leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT), automation and machine learning," Chandrasekaran added.

"We have balanced our focus on delivering an industry leading financial performance with our ongoing investment programme designed to capture evolving digital demand," chief financial officer Rajesh Gopinathan told reporters later.

The company has invested $250 million to support organic growth in digital businesses and in new markets, while maintaining profitability and generating strong operating cash flows.

Though the company added 22,576 techies in fourth quarter, exit of 13,424 employees in last three months, net addition was 9,152, taking total headcount to 353,843 employees by March 31.

"The year saw an all-time high gross addition (90,182) and a net addition of 34,187 employees, while 55,995 engineers left during the last 12 months," said company's global head of human resources Ajoy Mukherjee.

Attrition rate for IT services was 14.7 percent and 15.5 percent for back office (business processing) services during the last 12 months.

The company applied for 2,842 patents, including 260 in last quarter though 3,412 patents were granted till date.