HCL Infosystems Q3 net rises 3.2%

Hardware and systems integrator HCL Infosystems today posted 3.2 per cent growth in net profit for the third quarter ended March 31. Net profit stood at Rs 60.09 crore, compared to Rs 58.2 crore in the year-ago period.

However, gross sales were down by 5.8 per cent to Rs 2,842.4 crore from Rs 3,018.2 crore, because of lower revenue from telecommunication and office automation business. HCL Infosystems earned Rs 1,884.7 crore from telecommunication and office automation business, compared to Rs 2,152.6 crore in the corresponding quarter last year.

“Around 65 per cent of our revenue comes from Nokia and they saw heavy competition from the low-end and dual-SIM players. Nokia did not have products in this area and they crunched the inventory. In fact, Nokia was to launch new products in April,” said Ajai Chowdhry, chairman and CEO, HCL Infosystems.

The firm has been roped in by the Unique Identification Authority of India to offer biometric security, enrollment and delivery systems to Aadhaar, or the UID (Unique Identity) project.

“We are offering some products for the census and the public distribution system (PDS) to help create the database of Aadhaar. We will issue smart cards after doing the initial surveys, enrollment, integration, delivery of cards and then backending with the software. We are already providing similar solutions in Chandigarh for PDS,” added Chowdhry.

The company would also bid for training enrolling agents under the UID project. The project aims at training over one lakh enrolling agents, throwing up opportunities for large training companies like NIIT, Aptech and HCL Infosystems. In fact, the company is seeing momentum in laptops.

HCL Infosystems plans to expand in the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia through inorganic growth.

Sequentially, net profit rose 7.13 per cent from Rs 56.09 crore in the trailing quarter, while gross sales fell 6.9 per cent from Rs 3,054.2 crore. It posted a foreign exchange gain of Rs 12.2 crore. It has a backlog of orders worth Rs 2,200 crore and headcount for the quarter stood at 6,500.

HCL Infosystems’ stocks rose 1.3 per cent on the BSE Sensex to close at Rs 133.65.