L&T Infotech net jumps 35% to Rs 236 cr

Newly-listed IT exporter L&T Infotech today reported nearly 35 per cent increase in net profit at Rs 235.8 crore for the quarter ended June 30, driven by widening margins.
The city-headquartered company had posted a net profit of Rs 174.7 crore during same quarter in the preceding fiscal, a company statement said.
Total income came in at Rs 1,593.2 crore as against Rs 1,386.9 crore in the year ago period, while pre-tax profit was Rs 299.6 crore versus the 216.1 crore, it said.
The company, a part of the engineering major L&T, was able to widen its pre-tax profit margin by 3.30 per cent to 18.6 per cent.

When asked about the performance, the company's Managing Director and Chief Executive Sanjay Jalona said that the margin expansion was possible on better utilisation of employees and greater automation.
The total utilisation excluding trainees moved up to 78 per cent as against 75.2 per cent a year-ago.

Attrition came in at a high 19.5 per cent as against the 20.1 per cent and Jalona said it is targeting to reduce it by at lease two percentage points but declined to give a timeline. Accordingly total number of employees came down to 19,292 from the 20,331 a year ago.
He said there are stock options and a slew of employee engagement initiatives which the company has embarked on to arrest the attrition and added that it is the voluntary attrition by the high performing employees which the company is concerned about.

Jalona said digital, analytics, automation, cloud and industrial internet of things will be the key focus areas for the company going forward.
Refusing to divulge the contribution of digital stream to the revenues, he said it accounts for 22 per cent of the "efforts" being put in by the company.
On Brexit, he said that less than 2 per cent of the overall revenue come form Britain, therefore it will have a negligible impact on the company.
L&T Infotech debuted on the exchanges on July 22 after a highly successful public offer that was oversubscribed nearly 12 times made. But on the listing day the stock fell close to 2 per cent over the issue price at Rs 697.65 on BSE, making it the first IPO to list at a discount in four months.

The company had raised Rs 1,243 crore from the initial public offer which was subscribed 11.69 times. The issue was priced at the upper end of the price band of Rs 705-710 per share. Parent L&T sold about 10.3 per cent of its stake in the firm.
Shares of the company closed today 1.39 per cent down at Rs 679.95 apiece on BSE.