IT major Wipro reported a net profit of Rs 2,390.40 crore for Q1 of FY20, a flat growth of just 0.1% over the same period last year. Gross revenue for the quarter came in at Rs 14,910 crore, an increase of 1.3% year-on-year. In constant currency terms, the company reported a 4.4% decrease in revenue from the IT Services segment.
Jatin Dalal, Chief Financial Officer said, “We expanded the margins during the quarter, despite lower revenues, on the back of solid execution of several operational improvements and rupee depreciation. We also continued to sustain robust cash generation with Operating Cash Flows at 174.9% of net income.”
This is the first quarterly results announced by the company days after the appointment of its new MD and CEO Thierry Delaporte.
Reiterating his vision for the company, Delaporte said during the announcement of the Q1 results that Wipro will now have an obsessive focus on growth, on developing its relationships with large technology firms and will be ready to take bold and ambitious bets, taking on most complex projects from most demanding clients and delivering them.
“I am deeply honored to lead Wipro, an extraordinary company and an exemplary corporate citizen with a deep technology heritage built on a strong foundation of values. I have great respect for the work done by the Azim Premji Foundation, its 67% economic ownership of Wipro adds greater meaning to what we do. Profitable growth will be the most important priority on my agenda. I am confident that we will be able to deliver long-term, sustainable growth in the interest of all our stakeholders,” he added.
The company said that the COVID-19 pandemic could decrease technology spending and adversely affect demand for Wipro’s products. It could “affect the rate of customer spending and could adversely affect our customers’ ability or willingness to purchase our offerings, delay prospective customers’ purchasing decisions, adversely impact our ability to provide on-site consulting services and our inability to deliver our customers or delay the provisioning of our offerings, all of which could adversely affect our future sales, operating results and overall financial performance. Our operations may also be negatively affected by a range of external factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic that are not within our control," Wipro said.
Wipro also said during the media briefing that the company continued lateral hiring through the quarter and has onboarded 7,000 new employees across the globe.
Currently 93% of Wipro’s employees are working from home. But the company said that it may never return to a situation where 100% of the workforce is working 100% of the time from office. What percentage of the workforce would work at home would depend on the situation prevalent in that particular city, prevailing regulations and health and safety situations.
Wipro’s Q1 results come a day after the company’s AGM, where Chairman Rishad Premji said that Wipro has not laid off a single employee due to the impact of COVID-19 and has no plans to do so for now.