Infocrossing

Oct 25, 2018

There was a measure of house-cleaning involved in Bangalore-based offshore services major Wipro's latest quarterly results, with various 'adjusted' numbers mitigating the effects of the disposal of: (a) its InfoCrossing datacentre business earlier this year (see Wipro divests data centre business to Ensono ); (b) another 'customer settlement', to the tune of Rs5.1bn (~$73m); and (c) the proposed carve-out of its Indian Public Sector and Government operations. With this in mind, the figures read thus. Headline revenues for FQ2 (to 30th Sept.) crept ahead to $2.04bn, 1.4% up yoy and 0.7% higher than the prior quarter (or 1.9% if you exclude InfoCrossing). The operating margin took a hit from the 'customer settlement' as it did after a write-off in December 2017, plummeting back to 14.6%. Without this hit, the operating margin would have been 18.1%, almost a point up on the prior quarter. Management is forecasting pretty much flat revenues in FQ3, or a marginal increase if you exclude the Indian carveouts (i.e. clearly a drag on Wipro's core business). You have to wonder, then, when the revenues from Wipro's recent 10-year megadeal with Illinois-based benefits and HR management services company Alight Solutions are going to kick in (see Wipro lights up with $1.5b Alight megadeal ). This should surely be adding some $30-40m per quarter to the top line, but it's not evident yet. As such, the revenue (and margin) gap between HCL and Wipro grows wider in HCL's favour (see Europe drags HCL Tech – again ). This is an issue that simply massaging the numbers is not going to fix!