Wipro's second-quarter profit drops nearly 14 percent, misses estimate

(Reuters) - Indian software services exporter Wipro Ltd posted a 13.8 percent fall in second-quarter net profit as higher costs weighed, and said from this quarter on its Indian public sector undertaking (PSU) and government business would not report in the IT services segment.

Wipro's net profit of 18.89 billion rupees ($258.32 million) was below the analyst average estimate of 21 billion rupees, according to Refinitiv Eikon data.

Expenses rose over 13 percent to 126.28 billion rupees.

Wipro said it expected revenue from its key IT services business for the quarter ending Dec. 31 to be in the range of $2.03 billion to $2.07 billion.

The company will separate its Indian PSU and government business from the IT Services segment in the results for the current quarter, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

The enterprise business in India will remain in the IT services segment, Wipro added.

Revenue from IT services grew by 9.2 percent to 143.77 billion rupees in the second quarter.

Shares in Wipro closed marginally lower ahead of the results, in a broader Mumbai market that finished 0.77 percent higher.

($1 = 73.1250 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Krishna V Kurup and Tanvi Mehta in Bengaluru, Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Alexandra Hudson)