Why TCS failed to impress post-Infosys cheer

India's largest information technology services company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), posted mixed set of numbers for the quarter ended September 30 , which failed to impress.

While its revenue growth of 7.7 per cent came in slightly lower than expectations (compared to consensus Bloomberg estimates—Indian GAAP), its net profit declined by 4.7 per cent to Rs 2,301 crore (Rs 23.01 billion), compared to the June quarter.

This was contrary to expectations of 4.2 per cent sequential growth in the net profit. Volume growth stood strong at 6.25 per cent for the quarter, in line with expectations.

Says Rohit Anand, IT analyst at Pinc Research: "TCS results are below our expectations on revenue as well as net profit growth fronts. Even the operating (Ebit) margin is slightly below expectations of 27.5 per cent. While Infosys managed to beat muted result expectations, TCS has underscored on higher expectations".

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Despite managing to curtail foreign exchange losses to Rs 91 crore (versus expectations of Rs 200 crore), the bottomline of the company took a hit due to higher wage expenses (up 6.61 per cent quarter-on-quarter).

While the TCS management believes that the macroeconomic environment has worsened, they have not witnessed any pressure points just as yet.

However, the company is taking a hawkish stance on any possible signal of slowdown like project cancellations and budget cuts, etc. This echoes the sentiment expressed by Infosys management after the September quarter results.

Both companies have maintained their employee hiring targets for this fiscal, indicating towards some underlying strength in the demand outlook at present. Infosys expects to hire 45,000 people and TCS has a target of 60,000 people.

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For the sixth quarter in a row, TCS beat Infosys in terms of volume growth. While Infosys won four large deals in the September quarter, that number stood at a robust 10 for TCS.

Both companies have healthy deal pipelines with each of them chasing at least 10 large deals currently. Though Infosys registered handsome gains in Ebitda margins sequentially (over June quarter), there is still some catching up for TCS in this department.

Notably, a weaker rupee, coupled with strong utilisation rates, boosted their margins for the quarter gone by.

The trend in pricing was different. Though Infosys managed to clock a minor uptick of one per cent in its blended pricing for the quarter, that for TCS dipped by 90 basis points.

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The TCS management does expect pricing to be stable and has not yet witnessed any price cut yet. The management believes that pricing hikes may be hard to come by given the increasing macroeconomic uncertainties.

Barring the telecom space, TCS witnessed good growth across all its verticals. The telecom revenues reported a decline of 1.7 per cent in the quarter.

Interestingly, though Infosys managed to grow across all its verticals, the growth was much lower (three-six per cent).

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Surendra Goyal of Citigroup believes that, "Infosys' FY12 revenue guidance looks aggressive, given the macroeconomic challenges."

Goyal is neutral on Infosys and has set Rs 2,650 as the target price.

Meanwhile, TCS' stock closed 1.3 per cent lower at Rs 1,119.80 on the BSE (results were announced post market hours) on Monday, compared to 0.34 per cent decline in the Sensex, while Infosys closed 0.09 per cent higher at Rs 2,747.25.