BENGALURU: reported a 21.3% growth in constant currency for its IT services business in the first quarter, compared to the same period last year. But 7.7% of this came from the acquisition of Capco, the British consulting and technology services firm. Wipro concluded that acquisition in the previous quarter.
Yet, it was a very good quarter for the company. Sequential growth was higher than its own estimates. CEO Thierry Delaporte said it was higher than the upper end of the revenue guidance even after taking out the impact of the Capco acquisition. The company is benefiting from the strong demand environment and Delaporte’s strategic acquisitions and organisational changes.
“Not only is this the best ever quarterly results, Q1 also saw us report the highest organic sequential growth that we have delivered in 38 quarters. This tremendous growth was led by strong volumes across almost all markets, sectors and service offerings,” Delaporte said.
On a reported basis, the company’s revenue was up 25.7% to $2.4 billion, which meant Wipro added $262 million in revenue in the last 90 days. In constant currency, Wipro’s organic growth was 13.6%, slightly lower than that of Infosys and TCS.
“The demand environment is robust, and the quality of our overall pipeline is better than before,” added Delaporte. Wipro closed eight large deals in the quarter, resulting in total contract value (TCV) of $715 million. A lot of it was driven by its Americas1 market, which grew 18%. Most sectors performed well with BFSI and consumer verticals leading. The strong deal pipeline led the company to forecast revenue in the range of $2.53-2.58 billion in the second quarter, a sequential growth of 5-7%. Operating margins dropped 220 basis points (100bps = 1 percentage point) to 18.8% sequentially due to the integration of Capco and as the company invested in recruiting talent and keeping its supply chain steady.
“We have guided for revenue growth of 7%. Even at the lower end of this guidance, we will cross the $10-billion annual run rate of revenues, which we are very excited about. While we don’t guide for the year, the Q1 performance and the Q2 guidance sets us up for a well ahead of double-digit growth for the full year, even excluding Capco,” said Delaporte.