Tata Consultancy Services became the world’s most valuable IT services company on Thursday, overtaking Accenture in market capitalisation, with IBM at third place. The tables have turned since 2018, when IBM was in first place, Accenture second and TCS third.

TCS is the second most valued company across sectors in India, just behind Reliance Industries. Earlier this week, TCS also became the second Indian to cross a market capitalisation of Rs 10 lakh crore. 

On Thursday, the closing price of TCS at Rs 2,825 on BSE, valued it at Rs $144.73 billion, pulling ahead of Accenture at $142.4 billion. 

TCS has seen its market cap go by more than 20% in just the last two weeks, on the back of its Q2 results, Rs 16,000 crore share buyback and its outlook. 

On Wednesday, when it announced its results for the second quarter of the current fiscal, it announced that its board had approved a share buyback of Rs 16,000 crore at Rs 3,000 per share, TCS’ third such buyback. 

TCS’ stock went up by 5% on Thursday and closed 3% higher. TCS had reported a 4.9% rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 8,433 crore for the September 2020 quarter.

The firm, meanwhile, reported a 6.87% dip in the September quarter net at Rs 7,504 crore but said the demand has recovered faster than projected and will be sustainable going forward as well.

“TCS impressed with revenue growth of 4.8 per cent quarter-on-quarter. Broad-based growth across geographies and verticals indicates healthy recovery across segments,” said a report by Motilal Oswal Research.

At the time of writing, the stock of TCS was trading slightly down 0.34% on the BSE, although Sensex jumped over 200 points in the morning session after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) monetary policy announcement.

Brokerages too, are upbeat about the IT major with the likes of Edelweiss and Jefferies raising price targets for TCS on the back of strong results and deal closures.