'Indian IT majors may miss Q3 forecast'

By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 06 January 2009, 23:48 IST   |    2 Comments
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Bangalore: The December quarter may not at all be good for India's top IT companies as lower volumes and cross currency movement may cause to miss the quarter earning forecast of them. As per the recent CLSA report India's largest firms like Infosys and Wipro could well miss earning forecast in the quarter ended in December. The rupee has depreciated 11 percent on an average compared with the dollar. According to the report, Infosys would miss the lower end of its revenue forecast in dollar terms and at least the upper end of its constant currency guidance. "This indicates that despite the October 2008 cut in estimates, volumes have turned out even worse than Infosys' own conservative estimates," said the report. Earlier, Infosys projected a revenue between $1,175 million and $1,220 million for the third quarter. However, Bhavtosh Vajpayee and Nimish Joshi, CLSA analysts say that a cut in fiscal 2009 revenue outlook is likely on both dollar terms and constant currency terms. India's largest IT firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) may mark a 3.5 percent quarter-on -quarter decline in revenue in dollar terms. The company is likely to end fiscal 2009 with an eight percent year-on-year organic revenue growth, which is the lowest among the top five vendors. The report also pointed out that by proactively targeting Fortune 100 customers and using greater flexibility in pricing, HCL Technologies is emerging as a disruptive force in the industry. The comment was in terms of volume side. "Foreign exchange-related losses are likely to continue, although it would be much lower compared to the last year, while cancellation of certain hedges and rendering of certain cash-flow hedges as "ineffective" could result in negative surprises in forex losses at TCS, Hexaware and Tech Mahindra," the CLSA finds.