After revising upwards its guidance for the year to between $740m and $743m in January, Bangalore, India-based Infosys grew revenue to $753.8m during the 12 months ended March 31, 2003, compared to revenue of $545.1m in 2002. Net profit for the year grew 18.5% to $194.9m, and the company’s cash position increased 68% to $354.4m.
Despite this, CEO Nandan Nilekani said the past year had been challenging for the Indian software industry and told ComputerWire: Economic uncertainty is slowing down revenue growth, and there is huge competition in the market. This has affected pricing, and during the fourth quarter prices fell 5.1%.
For the fourth quarter, Infosys reported a net profit of $53.1m, up 25.5% on 2002, on revenue that grew 54.7% to $216m, up 8% sequentially. During the quarter the company signed 28 new clients including Nextel Partners and TeliaSonera and grew headcount by 1,298 employees, an increase from the 948 staff hired in the previous quarter, bringing the company’s headcount to about 14,000.
At the same time, Infosys said it had signed a business process outsourcing contract at its Progeon BPO venture with BT Group, to provide back-office processing and call center services for the company. Progeon will be one of two preferred suppliers to BT following the announcement of the $160m project with rival HCL Technologies earlier in the week.
For the first quarter ending June 30, Infosys expects revenue to grow to between $220m and $222m, and for the full year ending March 31, 2004, revenue is expected to grow between 25.5% and 27.7% to between $946m and $963m, although this will be down some 11 percentage points on 2003.
Source: Computerwire
