LTI Q4 net up 13.7% to Rs 289.4 cr

LTI, the listed infotech arm of engineering major L&T, today reported a 13.7 per cent jump in its March quarter net at Rs 289.4 crore on a faster-than-industry revenue growth.

The company had posted a net profit of Rs 254.5 crore in the year-ago period and Rs 282.8 crore in the preceding December quarter. Its profit for fiscal year 2017-18 grew 14.6 per cent to Rs 1,112.4 crore.

The company's chief executive and managing director Sanjay Jalona said revenue grew 19.3 per cent to Rs 2,001 crore, driven primarily by the performance of the banking, finance services and insurance and consumer goods, retail and pharma verticals.

When asked how it managed to buck the industry trend with a good show in these two verticals, he said the company did not face any client-specific difficulty.

It, however, faced sluggishness in the retail sector in line with the industry, he said.

For the fiscal year 2017-18, it reported a 12.4 per cent growth in its revenue at Rs 7,306 crore, making it the first time for it to have ended with over USD 1 billion in revenues.

Its performance in FY19 will be within the "top quadrant of the industry or better", Jalona told PTI, declining to give any specific guidance.

Industry lobby Nasscom is expecting the USD 160-billion sector to clock a 7-9 per cent revenue growth in FY19.

From a margin perspective, it witnessed a narrowing to 14.6 per cent from the preceding quarter's 17.1 per cent, which was attributed to currency headwinds by chief financial officer Ashok Kumar Sonthalia.

Its revenue from North America grew 17 per cent, Europe delivered a 24.8 per cent growth, while Indian revenues were up 29.4 per cent.

Jalona said it will be very selective in bidding for domestic deals within India.

It added over 3,000 people during the fiscal to take its total employee strength to 24,000 and the utilisation including trainees was marginally higher at 79.9 per cent.

Jalona said it has upped its hiring in the local geographies in the last 18 months but rued that there is a paucity of talent in many of the markets that it operates in.

The company scrip gained 5.53 per cent to close at Rs 1,591.30 a piece on the BSE, as against a 0.88 per cent correction on the benchmark today.