Infy net up 4%, stock soars 11%

WORST IS OVER Optimism surges as full-year outlook holds steady; co adds 66 clients, hires more than 10,000

NEW DELHI: Software major Infosys pleasantly surprised the markets on Friday when it beat expectations and posted a rise in both revenues and profits for the April-June quarter, and more important, gave a steady outlook to suggest it was poised to bounce back on the highgrowth path.

Net profit for the first quarter of the current fiscal year rose 3.7% from the same period a year ago to R2,374 crore, but more than the number, a surge of optimism seemed to be in the air following the return of the company's iconic co-founder NR Narayana Murthy as executive chairman to revive the for- tunes of the company that has been lagging peers for about two years now. The worst seemed to be over, some analysts said.

Murthy did not offer comments on the results on Friday.

Shares of Infosys, which has an army of 157,000 techies, shares first zoomed by 15% and closed up by 11 % to R2,803 on the BSE, while the overall benchmark Sensex rose by 1.44%.

Some analysts were expecting Infosys to cut its full-year growth forecasts but it maintained revenue growth outlook unchanged at 6-10%, and that was good enough for the markets.

“The company was being “cautiously optimistic” about the rest of the year.

April-June net profit was down 0.8% in rupee terms compared to the January-March 2013 quarter. In dollar terms the profit grew 0.5% to $418 million.

Infosys’s revenues during the quarter stood at R11,267 crore, which was up 17.2% from the same period of last fiscal. In dollar terms the revenue was up 13.6% year-on-year to $1.99 billion.