The country’s third-largest IT outsourcer, Wipro, reported healthy numbers for the first quarter backed by higher revenues from the financial services and energy and utilities’ segments.

Net profit rose 1.2 per cent to ₹2,077 crore year on year. The company’s gross revenues were marginally up at ₹13,626 crore from ₹13,599 crore over the same period last year.

The Azim Premji-owned company announced a second buyback in two years, of 343.75 million shares, which is about 7 per cent of the equity, aggregating a payout of ₹11,000 crore.

This amounts to nearly 25 per cent of its total cash position. Wipro’s shares closed at ₹270 on Thursday.

The buyback, at ₹320 per share, is expected to kick off sometime in October.

The company also gave out a guidance for the IT services’ business, which was a bit of a disappointment. Per street expectations, the guidance was expected to be in the range of 0-2 per cent, while the actual guidance was in the range of -0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent or $1,962 million to $2,001 million.

The IT services margin, however, went down to 16.8 per cent from 18.3 per cent on a sequential basis.

Digital focus pays off “We delivered revenues above the upper end of the guidance range. Our focus on digital combined with our investments in client mining have resulted in strong growth in top accounts,” Abidali Z Neemuchwala, CEO and member of the board, said at a press conference.

He also categorically denied that Wipro had let go of a large number of employees during the last 12 months. He said the net addition to employee count in the quarter was 1,309.

The Bengaluru-based company said it has trained 15,000 employees in digital skills during the quarter and has so far trained 75,000 people in its total workforce.

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