TCS second-quarter profit rises 34 percent

BANGALORE (Reuters) - Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest provider of information technology services, said quarterly profit rose 34 percent, beating analyst estimates, as the industry benefited from a record haul of new contracts.

TCS and rivals such as Infosys Ltd and International Business Machines Corp won $6 billion of contracts, according to Information Services Group - the most ever for a quarter - as companies spent more on IT in the United States and outsourced more to cut costs in continental Europe.

TCS, part of the salt-to-autos Tata conglomerate, said on Tuesday after the stock market close that consolidated net profit for the three months to September 30 rose to 47.02 billion rupees from 35.12 billion rupees in the same period a year earlier.

That compares with the 44.7 billion rupee average of 27 analyst estimates, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Shares of TCS, India's largest company by market value, which rose to a record on Monday on heightened expectations, ended up 0.1 percent at 2215.40 rupees on Tuesday.

(Reporting By Harichandan Arakali; Editing by Tony Munroe and Christopher Cushing)