Infosys expects H2 to be soft but optimistic about future

Country's second largest software services firm Infosys today said it expects the second half of the current fiscal to be soft as there are lesser working days and furloughs but is fairly optimistic about the future.
"The third quarter is historically a soft quarter for this industry with furloughs and lower working days...Fourth quarter we expect some momentum to come back so we are reasonably confident about the fourth quarter, but overall the second half will be softer than the first half, but we are fairly optimistic about the future," Infosys COO UB Pravin Rao said in an investor call.

Third quarter is traditionally weaker for the IT firms as the business is impacted by low volume growth amid Christmas and New Year holidays, and furloughs in the US and Europe.
Rao said barring a couple of industries, there has been a broad-based growth for the company in the second quarter.
"The only areas where we are challenged to some extent is in the energy and utility and telecom space, both these areas are probably a challenge for the industry.
"In addition from an Infosys perspective, we are a little challenged on the insurance sector but barring that we have seen good growth across geographies and we expect the momentum to continue," he said.

Regarding the IT spend, Rao said overall it is fairly constant but they are seeing a re-purposing by clients.
"Clients are looking at spending on new areas and at the same time, they are looking at how best they can cut costs in some of the traditional areas so that they can re-purpose this spend in new areas. That is what we are seeing in terms of trends," he added.
The company has maintained its guidance in constant currency terms at 10-12 per cent growth.