Wipro Q4 results beat market expectations
Bangalore: Software major Wipro's results have beaten market estimates as well as its own projections. The company has posted a year-on-year profit and revenue growth of 39 per cent each for the quarter-ended March 31, 2007. (See: Wipro: A billion dollar show)

On the back of a tax write-back of Rs70 crore, Wipro has reported a net profit of Rs856 crore on revenues of Rs4,333 crore against a net of Rs617 crore on revenues of Rs3,113 crore in the corresponding period last year.

For year-ended March 31, 2007, Wipro reported a 42 per cent growth in net profit at Rs2,942 crore, while revenues grew 41 per cent to Rs15,001 crore.

Azim Premji chairman, Wipro Ltd said, "Our investments in differentiated service lines such as technology infrastructure services, testing services and enterprise applications services are yielding good results."

Wipro stock edged up on the BSE to hit an intra-day high of Rs600 before closing at Rs570, a loss of 1.4 per cent over previous close.

Negating news of the slowing down of the US economy Premji said, "There is nothing in terms of the environment in Europe, Japan or the US, which is a cause of concern. We have seen no forward signs of the slowdown in US economy," Premji said.

Operating margins of Wipro's acquisitions portfolio improved by more than 900 basis points sequentially. A strong rupee impacted operating margins by 30 basis points, while the salary hike impacted by 50 basis points. Wipro increased the salaries of its onsite employees by 3-4 per cent effective January 1, 2007.

The company added 44 new clients in Q4 and also added 14,076 employees on a net basis, comprising 12,699 in its IT services business and 1,377 in BPO business during the year, taking its total headcount to 67,818.

Wipro saw its attrition increase marginally to 16.9 per cent in March quarter.
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India Cements' net rises 9-times
Chennai: India Cements has reported a nine-fold growth in net profit for 2006-07 over the previous year.

N. Srinivasan, vice-chairman and managing director India cements said the company would benefit from the addition of ten-lakh tonne capacity, a part of its planned expansion of 20 lakh tonnes. The expansion would come from the modernisation of its Sankaridrug plant and upgradation at its other locations.

India Cements has six cement plants in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, with a seventh with Visakha Cements, an associate that is to be merged with India Cements. Its total production capacity is 90 lakh tonnes.

The company has achieved 100 per cent capacity utilisation with cement production at 75.51 lakh tonnes, a 4 per cent growth over the previous year's 72.62 lakh tonnes. The gross realisation during 2006-07 was Rs3,130 a tonne against Rs2,460 in the previous year.

The company is looking at expansion in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh where it has mining leases. The Himachal Pradesh project is also in the pipeline but the work has not started. The road access to limestone deposits has to be improved first, he said.
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Ambuja Cements Q1 net increases 43 per cent
Mumbai: Ambuja Cements' (earlier Gujarat Ambuja Cements) first-quarter profit has risen 43 per cent, due to higher realisations, lower costs and a one-time profit from sale of shares in an associate company.

Net profit for the quarter ended March 31, 2007 was reported at Rs590.74 crore, up from Rs412.77 crore in the corresponding previous period.

Net sales grew 34 per cent to Rs1,434 crore (Rs1,074 crore), while volumes sales grew four per cent to 4.34 million tonnes (4.18 million tonnes).

Company officials said EBITDA rose 94 per cent to Rs829 crore (Rs427 crore) while other income was higher at Rs266 crore (Rs57 crore), largely due to a one-time gain of Rs241 crore from sale of 9.54 crore shares in associate company, Ambuja Cement India, to a Swiss company called Holderind Investments.

(As per an agreement with Holderind, Ambuja will sell another 9.54 crore shares on April 30, 2007 for Rs535 crore and an equal number on April 30, 2008 for Rs589 crore.)
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Satyam Q4 net up 38 per cent
Hyderabad: Satyam Computer Services has recorded a total income of Rs1,849.55 crore and a net profit of Rs393 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2007 against a total income of Rs1,342.51 crore and a net profit of Rs284.83 crore for the corresponding quarter last year.

This reflects a growth of 37.7 per cent in revenues and 38.2 per cent in net profit over the same quarter last year.

For the full year, Satyam's revenues stood at Rs6,668.86 crore (Rs5,125.84 crore), a growth of about 30.09 per cent. The net profit was Rs1,404.62 crore (Rs1,149.06 crore), a growth of 22.24 per cent.

The company's management provided a revenue guidance of $1.87 billion to $1.9 billion. The company hinted at revenues touching the $2-billion mark in third and fourth quarters.

The chairman of Satyam Computer, B Ramalinga Raju, said this growth might translate into 28-30 per cent in 2008 over fiscal 2007 in dollar terms and 20 to 22 per cent in rupee terms.
EPS for the full year is expected to be between Rs25.32 and Rs25.73, a growth of 18-20 per cent.

The company's board has proposed a final dividend of 125 per cent, thereby taking the total dividend to 175 per cent.

Raju said the business portfolio of the company has undergone a change and dependence on the US market has come down.

The US business has come below 60 per cent and Europe contributes about 20 per cent and Australia seven per cent. This distributed business, coupled with over 50 per cent revenue from offshore, has helped create more value to customers and margins to the company.

The company had performed despite pressure on margins due to wage hikes which resulted in 5 per cent increase in overseas salaries and 16 per cent for associates in India.

Satyam has added 138 customers in fiscal 2007, including seven Fortune 500 companies.
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HCL Tech enters into pact with Saudi company
New Delhi: HCL Technologies has tied up with the $200-million Saudi Arabian company Advanced Electronics Company (AEC) to implement IT projects in West Asia.

As a part of the agreement, HCL Technologies would train employees of AEC to equip them to offer IT transformation services in areas related to telecom, defence, e-governance, financial services, real estate and education.

HCL's global delivery centres would continue to offer its remote infrastructure services. While HCL Technologies did not divulge the exact financial details of the partnership, officials said the partnership would be on a revenue sharing basis but the extent to which revenues would be shared would depend on the kind of services that would be shared on various projects.
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Hyundai to invest $40 million in R&D centre
Hyderabad: Hyundai Motor India has commissioned an R&D centre in Hyderabad and plans to invest up to $40 million in the facility where future cars would be engineered and designed.

The company has inducted about 100 people since it commenced operations and expects this to go up to 200 people by the year-end.

The managing director of Hyundai Motor India, Heung Soo Lheem, said the focus of this centre would be on computer-aided design, computer-aided analysis and software development for cars of the future.

Lheem said the R&D centre is not for the current crop of cars made by Hyundai. The company has acquired a 15-acre site in Hyderabad near the Hitec City and plans to develop its campus for R&D by 2009. The entire project would be scaled up in a modular fashion.
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Tata Motors to launch base model of Indigo
Mumbai: Tata Motors is ready to launch a base variant of the limousine Indigo XL model, the Indigo XL Economy which would be at least Rs1 lakh cheaper than the existing top of the line XL model, said industry sources.

The Indigo XL is currently available in diesel and petrol variants priced at Rs7.54 lakh and Rs6.85 lakh respectively (ex-showroom, Mumbai).

The company said it has introduced the base model in pursuit of the strategy to make the XL model more affordable. Tata Motors has set a target of 1,000 units a month.

The Economy model does not have certain features like the DVD-based four-speaker integrated entertainment system with headrest-mounted twin LCD screen, a 12V socket in the rear console, electrically operated outer rear-view mirrors with integrated turn indicator lamps, six-way-powered front seats with lumbar support and chiller compartment in the glove box, present in the XL variant but will continue to have the choice of two new 1.4-litre engines - the 16-valve Twin-Cam petrol engine churning out 101 PS and the silent high torque 70 PS DICOR (common rail) diesel engine.
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TRAI survey says consumers not happy with quality of mobile services
New Delhi: According to a survey by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the overall customer satisfaction level is poor in all the existing telecom circles as only seven operators out of 129 meet the quality of service benchmark set by the regulator.

TRAI had appointed TUV South Asia as an independent agency for conducting the survey on a sample of about 19,066 basic service and 45,197 cellular telephone service subscribers.

Customer perception related to operator's service was assessed for seven defined parameters, including network performance, billing and customer helpline service.

In metro circles, only four of the operators - BPL, Bharti, Reliance Communications and Tata in Mumbai - achieved the overall customer satisfaction level. The lowest overall customer satisfaction level was achieved by Bharti, BSNL and Tata in Kolkata. The achievement level of operators not meeting the benchmark ranges between 82 per cent and 93 per cent.

In the basic services category in metro circles, 12 out of 15 operators do not meet the benchmark. The achievement level of operators not meeting benchmark is 71-94 per cent, with BSNL-Kolkata having the lowest number of customers satisfied.
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