We are looking at 22-26% earnings growth in FY17, says Arun Jain

Intellect Design Arena posted a steady set of Q4 numbers.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV India, the company’s CMD Arun Jain said it is aiming at 22-26 per cent earnings growth in FY17.

You have turned around now. What has worked for the company as compared to last year, when you had losses?

I think we had the happy quarter after full year result. We grew 33 per cent, which is the highest in the IT industry. During the last year, we won 50 deals in the digital space and one of them is over ₹100 crore for a seven-year deal, which we have won for a small finance bank in India. In product business, establishing leadership and brands becomes important. So we would able to establish our brands in the initial transaction banking, digital space and digital core. We won a deal in digital insurance and we are getting to the footprint in that segment. After November we will launch a new liquidity risk management (LRM) solution called Intellect One LRM Solution, which is a Basel-III product. These four elements are driving our leadership in digital. And finally, our team of 15 top-notch people are there and then we hired 50 middle managers under the ‘Future Leaders Programme’ last quarter where we brought in the best talent of India under one roof. They have been groomed for taking leadership in the middle management space. This is what has driven our growth and I think this will continue our journey for the next year.

You have missed your dollar revenue guidance that was at 26-30 per cent. So how is the dollar revenue looking for the next year?

As of now definitely that challenge will always be there when the IT spends are being curtailed in the global market space for service industry. But what we have seen is a delay in decision making from global players. Some of the deals which were supposed to be closed in this quarter got delayed. They pushed back those deals for the next quarter, especially in Europe, and a few deals in America, which have not resulted as expected. Otherwise, we would have been grown 26-30 per cent. There is some pressure which is coming in. But Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa are doing well. But in Middle-East, over a period of time, with oil prices coming down, there could be some pressure.

What’s your outlook for FY17?

For FY17, we are looking at 22-26 per cent earnings growth. So our growth expectation is the way we did last year — 22-26 per cent.

We met that guidance of 24.5 per cent in dollar terms. We missed the 26-30 per cent guidance last year. For the next year, we are comfortable on 22-26 per cent. We will continue keeping that momentum this year.

COMMENT NOW