(Reuters) -India’s Wipro rose as much as 4% on Friday after the country’s fourth-largest IT firm reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings, driven by improved client spending in segments of its Americas business.
At least six brokerages upgraded Wipro’s stock after the company posted a 0.8% rise in first-quarter revenue and an 11% jump in net profit, both topping analysts’ average estimates, according to LSEG data.
Data also showed that at least 10 brokerages raised their price targets on the stock, which was the top gainer on the benchmark Nifty 50 index and the IT index early on Friday. The blue-chip index and the IT index were both down 0.6% and 0.2%, respectively.
India’s fourth-largest IT company said it expects revenue for the September quarter to be in the range of $2.56 billion and $2.61 billion, ranging between a drop of 1% and a rise of 1%, in line with what analysts were expecting.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley said strong large deal wins at Wipro “bode well” for growth in the second half of the fiscal year, while those at Investec said deal wins were the “big highlight of the quarter,” and were the highest in more-than 13 quarters.
Wipro’s deal wins rose to $5 billion in the quarter, up from $3.3 billion a year earlier.
“More importantly, these large deals are concentrated among Wipro’s top clients, which implies greater wallet share,” Morgan Stanley analysts said in a note.
Wipro’s quarterly performance stood in contrast to rivals Tata Consultancy Services and HCLTech, which reported weaker revenue for the same period.
TCS and Infosys shares were up 0.1%, while HCLTech shares were down 0.8% on Friday.
(Reporting by Manvi Pant; Editing by Chandini Monnappa and Nivedita Bhattacharjee)
