Infosys will not shy away from large acquisitions as long as it is value-accretive, said MD & CEO Salil Parekh.

Addressing shareholders at the company’s 40th Annual General Meeting, Parekh said Infosys has an active acquisition programme. “When we find something and even if it is large (company), we will look at it, the price (of the acquisition) and its size,” he said. Parekh also said the company is confident of meeting the revenue guidance for the current fiscal.

The board recommended the reappointment of UB Pravin Rao, COO and Whole-time Director. He will superannuate on December 12 “after a stellar tenure running Infosys operations, especially when the company’s systems were severely tested in the past year”.

Pravin Rao said Infosys has addressed several issues concerning the Income-Tax portal. “We are deeply concerned about the issues. Several glitches that impacted the stability have been addressed,” he said.

Infosys is well-positioned for another year of market-leading performance in a post-pandemic, cloud-first, distinctly digital era., said Nandan Nilekani, in his virtual address.

Growth in digital business

Infosys digital business has grown to account for 48.5 per cent of its total revenues, and its large transformation deals peaked to an all-time high of $14.1 billion, with 66 per cent being net new in the last fiscal, he said.

Dividend, buyback

The board recommended a capital return of ₹15,600 crore, including a final dividend of ₹6,400 crore, and an open market buyback of shares of ₹9,200 crore.

The company continued to strengthen its talent pool by recruiting 19,230 graduates in India and 1,941 outside India to serve clients’ burgeoning demand for digital acceleration in FY21. “We expanded our US hiring commitment to 25,000 by 2022 with an additional 12,000 new American jobs across roles. We will also double our Canadian workforce to 4,000 by 2023. In the UK, we announced plans to create 1,000 digital jobs to fuel post-pandemic growth,'' Nilekani said.

Infosys will give another round of salary increases in July, the second in this calendar year.

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