Wipro Q4 net down 1.6% on margin hit,aims $15bn revenue by '20

Wipro, India's third-largest IT firm, today reported 1.6 per cent drop in its March quarter net profit to Rs 2,235 crore due to pressure on margins even as it aims to double revenue to USD 15 billion by 2020, while its board approved a Rs 2,500-crore share buyback plan.
The Azim Premji-led firm had registered a consolidated net profit of Rs 2,272 crore in the same quarter last fiscal.
IT services, which account for a lion's share of its turnover, saw margins drop by 10 basis points to 20.1 per cent compared to October-December quarter and by 2 percentage points on year-on-year basis and were also impacted by weakness in its financial and healthcare services business.

The company board also approved a share buyback for Rs 2,500 crore. Wipro will buy up to 4 crore shares, representing 1.62 per cent of the total paid-up capital, at Rs 625 apiece.
Wipro, which has lagged larger rivals Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services in fourth-quarter earnings, forecast revenue from IT services business at USD 1.90-1.94 billion. This would be an increase of 1-3 per cent quarter-on-quarter growth.
The company is looking to double its turnover to USD 15 billion by 2020 as it focuses more on digital and automation under the new management team.

It closed 2015-16 fiscal with about USD 7.7 billion in annual revenues. During January-March quarter, Wipro's revenue rose 12.9 per cent to Rs 13,741.7 crore.

"Our focus is to drive significant growth in our 'run' business through integrated services and hyper-automation while gaining leadership in the 'change' business through investments in Digital and Consulting capabilities, IP-based platforms and products and creating differentiated domain solutions for non-linear growth," Wipro CEO Abidali Z Neemuchwala said.
The numbers were announced after the markets closed. Shares of Wipro today closed at Rs 601.35 apiece, up 2.07 per cent from its previous close on the BSE.
Kotak Securities Senior Vice-President and Head of Private Client Group Research Dipen Shah said the revenues matched up with expectations but margins were below our expectations.

"Client-specific challenges in BFSI impacted growth while energy vertical continued to witness headwinds. The revenue guidance for Q1 indicates marginal growth on an organic basis, which in disappointing," he added.
Wipro continues to be impacted by the lack of scale up in large accounts, apart from the continuing challenges in the Energy/Telecom segments, he said.
For FY 2015-16, its net profit increased 2.7 per cent to
Rs 8,892.2 crore, while revenue grew 9.1 per cent to Rs 51,630.7 crore from last fiscal.
"Overall, we find the demand environment to be stable... With our integrated services focus, we are able to proactively help clients move this spend to us from 'run' to 'change'. In Q4, we saw good deal flow and good set of deal closure. We won four strategic new deals in Q4," he said.

Calling his first opportunity to interact with the press since taking over as CEO as a "special moment", Neemuchwala said he had met 70 of its top 100 clients in past few weeks.
"Our ambition is to be USD 15 billion by fiscal 2020 with 23 per cent operating margins. The core leadership team has laid out the ambition and we have done a tremendous amount of detailing in terms of how to get there," Neemuchwala said.
Wipro has highlighted six key areas that it will focus on to chase its USD 15-billion revenue target.
"We have broken down our overall strategy in certain key themes which we will drive to meet our ambition... There are six broad themes on which we anchor our efforts -- digital, client mining, geography focus, non-linearity, hyper- automation and building and leveraging partner ecosystem," he said.

Neemuchwala, who took over as CEO in earlier this year, said Wipro has re-aligned consulting business into digital to further boost the digital business. The company has also made key appointments including elevation of Bhanumurthy BM as COO.
"We are confident that we will be able to execute on the themes and will position us very well with our clients. We have a settled and receptive organisation, motivated set of employees and an excited leadership team," he said.
Talking about geographical focus, Neemuchwala said the city-based firm is driving higher localisation in markets like continental Europe and the US. It is also investing in new growth markets including Latin America, Canada and Africa.

On merger and acquisitions, he said its strategy is targetted towards fulfulling capabilities and market access gaps that it believes it has in terms of execution.