Infosys Q1 Preview: Global headwinds to constrain performance; FY24 outlook key

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Infosys is expected to look good on a year-on-year basis, it will likely be muted sequentially in a quarter that is usually the strongest for the technology sector. The company’s consolidated net profit is seen rising a mere 1% sequentially to Rs 6,185 crore, according to the average of estimates given by 13 brokerages. On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the bottomline is seen 15% higher.

The consolidated revenue is expected to rise by just 0.7% sequentially to Rs 37,718 crore, but up 9.4% on year. The Bengaluru-based software services exporter will release its first quarter earnings on Thursday, July 20. Besides a subdued Q1 show, analysts expect Infosys to cut the upper end of its sales growth outlook for FY24.

After reporting a strong 15.4% industry-leading revenue growth in constant currency (CC) terms for FY23, Infosys guided for a mere 4-7% growth for FY24 amid an uncertain global environment. “The upper end of the 4-7% CC revenue growth guidance given for FY24 is dependent on Infosys winning some mega deals in FY24… There is a fair probability that the upper end of the guidance may be lowered either post 1QFY24 or after 1H,” Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities said in its report. It will be interesting to see the deal wins of Infosys in the quarter gone by, given that its peers Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, and HCL Technologies reported healthy deal wins for the June quarter.

HCL Technologies also said that the deal pipeline remained at a record high. Analysts had pointed out that BFSI, one of the largest verticals for TCS, Infosys and other IT majors, witnessed some slowdown in growth. This is reflected in the numbers of TCS, HCL Tech, as well as Wipro.