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Third-ranked India-based offshore services player, Wipro, followed peers TCS and Infosys in breaking through the $5b revenue barrier, finishing the year (to 31st March) with headline revenues 19% higher yoy at $5.2b. The final quarter saw headline revenues rise by 20% to $1.4b, 4.2% higher than the prior quarter (+3.5% at constant exchange rates). Q4 operating margins were over two points down yoy to 22.1% (10bps lower qoq). Wipro’s profitability still lags its larger peers’ by a wide margin.
It’s been a particularly interesting period for Wipro in all sorts of different ways. Earlier this month Wipro acquired the Global Oil and Gas Information Technology practice of the Commercial Business Services business unit of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) for $150m cash. This is expected to put more ‘wellie’ behind Wipro’s efforts in the Energy & Utilities sector, which accounts for some 10% of its revenues.
Then just last week, Wipro was selected by Geneva-based banking software firm, Temenos, to deliver its flagship T24 product on an ASP basis for small and medium sized banks and new market entrants in Europe (see here), a rather strategic announcement which curiously has yet to appear on Wipro’s website.
Wipro has also seen a top-level management shake-out since new CEO TK Kurien took the reins (see Wipro - And then there were none!). I do need to point that there are in fact still a couple of non-Indian executives in Kurien’s top team: Kirk Strawser, who still heads Wipro’s global consulting practice, and Martha Bejar, who was originally recruited from Microsoft in July 2009 to head up Wipro’s global sales and operations. Bejar subsequently moved to ‘Special Projects’, and it now appears she has been moved again to head up Infocrossing, the US data centre business Wipro acquired in August 2007. I can also reveal that the head of Wipro’s European business transformation consulting practice, Roger Camrass, has ‘left the building’. Camrass joined Wipro from Fujitsu in August 2009 (see Wipro Europe scoops top Fujitsu consultant).
