TCS, Infosys, HCL or Wipro - Who stacks how?

By Ruma Dubey

All the four bigwigs of IT companies in India have declared their Q2FY13 numbers and now it is time to see who stacks how and who emerged at the top.

From all aspects, TCS has emerged right at the top, with the highest revenue, both in rupee as well as dollar terms. In terms of the operating margins too, TCS is at the top. And most importantly, its net profit is the highest in the sector for Q2 at Rs.3512 crore. Attrition rates, employee count, cash and cash equivalent and even utilization rate, TCS is number one. But in terms of clients being added, HCL Tech has taken over and in terms of geographical growth too, HCL Tech has done much better.

Where Wipro has taken over is in terms of client allocation of IT spend. Thanks to Wipro getting leaner, and keeping a close ear to the ground when it comes to customers as well as employees, the company has been able to steal this march ahead.  Yet, Infosys, which saw a fall in IT spend allocation, did see a rise in net profit. So it might be too premature to beat the victory drums for Wipro on this front.

In terms of guidance, Infosys takes the lead when it comes to presenting an extremely challenging year ahead and by maintained its already conservative dollar-term revenue expectation at 5% growth for FY13. Its OPM in Q2FY13 dropped 170 bps, one of he sharpest drops in recent quarters and the company said that OPM could be impacted by 200 bps further due to wage hike effected across the board from October 1. It also cut its rupee EPS from Rs. 166.46 to Rs.160.6 on the back of rupee appreciation and cross currency movements.

TCS does not give guidance but has stated that its OPM could dip further. In current Q2,though its margins are the highest, it was actually down 75 bps on a sequential basis due to productivity losses and onsite shift. Yet, it overall remains optimistic and has stated that it will do better than 11-14% growth forecast set by Nasscom.

Wipro has given better guidance, stating that revenue from its IT services business would be in the range of $1.56-1.59 billion or an average of $1.57 billion, 2.2% up QoQ from Q2FY13 of $1.54 billion. It demerging its non-IT business and expects profit margins to improve.

HCL Tech does not give guidance and hopes to continue to do better through client mining, which is to get more from same clients, targeting large contracts coming up for renewal offering better pricing to the customers.

So then, which is better amongst the biggies? Purely in terms of fundamentals, TCS emerges on the top and HCL shows much potential going ahead. In terms of pure stock market logistics, TCS has gone up substantially and trades at a premium to Infosys. This makes calling out aggressive prices on the counter extremely difficult. On the other hand, Infosys has been battered down a lot and things might look up in H2. Most brokerage houses have given a buy on TCS and HCL and maintain a cautious outlook on Infosys and muted on Wipro.