Infosys Ltd, India’s second-largest IT services company, on Friday projected revenue growth for the fiscal year that began on April 1 to accelerate after it met its higher revised target for 2015-16 as it won new clients.
The company expects revenue for the current financial year to grow in the range of 11.8 per cent to 13.8 per cent in dollar terms, it said in a statement. This is higher than the 9.1 per cent jump in revenue to $9.5 billion it reported for the year ended on March 31.
The goal for 2016-17 is also higher than the revised target for last fiscal year. In January, the company had raised its revenue guidance for 2015-16 to 8.9-9.3 per cent from 6.4-8.4 per cent earlier.
The strong results vindicate the appointment of former SAP executive Vishal Sikka as the CEO and managing director of Infosys. The results also indicate that the steps taken by Sikka, the first non-founder CEO of Infosys, to speed up growth at the company are working. Sikka took charge in August 2014 and 2015-16 was his first full year at the helm.
Infosys also said revenue for the three months through March was $2.45 billion, up 1.6 per cent sequentially and 13.3 per cent from a year earlier.
Net profit grew 1.7 per cent sequentially and 7 per cent year on year to $533 million for the fourth quarter. Net profit for the full year rose 1.9 per cent to $2.05 billion.
“Over the course of this year, we saw this strategy, of bringing automation and innovation to our clients, on a foundation of learning and education, start to show results in the organic growth of our client relationships, in our win rates in large deals, and in the types of projects we are seeing in strategic areas where we never participated before,†he said.
Sikka said this is the beginning of a period of faster growth on the back of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud platforms.
“The world of our future looks entirely different – it is a world that is being fundamentally reshaped by digital technologies, and it is our endeavor to create great value for every business through solutions built on our AI technology and open, cloud platforms,†he said.
Chief operating officer UB Pravin Rao said employee attrition reduced in the fourth quarter while the momentum of large deal wins continued.
The company added 325 clients during 2015-16, compared with 221 the year before, to take the total to 1,092.
Infosys added 661 employees to its workforce in the last quarter, taking its total staff strength to 194,044. Attrition on a standalone basis fell from 18.9 per cent in 2014-15 to 13.6 per cent in 2015-16. In the fourth quarter, attrition dropped to 12.6 per cent from 13.4 per cent a year earlier.
