Ramco Systems declined sharply for the second straight session on Tuesday.

The stock of the south-based IT firm tumbled by 10% to Rs 485.65 on the BSE, touching its lower limit. There were only sellers in the stock. 155,000 shares changed hands on the counter by mid-afternoon.

The Ramco Systems scrip plunged for the second straight session today. It fell by 10% on Monday to Rs 539.60. The stock displayed intense volatility. Just before the latest two-session fall, it had touched a 52-week high of Rs 599.55 on 24 January 2003, having risen by 60% in just a few sessions from a recent low of Rs 373.35 on 8 January 2003. From Rs 118.25 on 12 November 2002, the stock had rallied by a staggering 407% in a few months to its 52-week high of Rs 599.55 on 24 January 2003.

An operator is said to be active in the stock. There have been rumours that Rakesh Jhunjhunwala has mopped up a major chunk of the stock in the last two to three months.

Not many IT analysts track the Ramco Systems scrip. Reports that the company has bagged some orders in India had led the recent rally on the counter. One of the anlaysts from a domestic brokerage even declined to comment on the stock, when contacted by capitalmarket.com.

Last month, Ramco Systems said that it had won a Rs 5-crore order from Tirupati Tirumala Devasthanam to develop an integrated system for front-office solutions and back-office automation for various departments. Ramco Systems will be working closely with Reliance Infocomm, part of the Reliance Group, which will provide the infrastructure facilities for TTD.

Earlier, Ramco Systems announced that it had secured a work order from the Andhra Pradesh government to design, deploy and implement human resources management solutions, self-service and learning management solutions. The order is to develop, implement and rollout next-generation HRMS. The consortium, led by Ramco Systems, comprises Hewitt Associates and The Boston Group. The company had said that the consortium could bag this order on the strength of a word-class application building expertise channeled through a unique Web-based rapid solution delivery infrastructure called Ramco VirtualWorks(tm) along with global HR consulting and learning management systems experience.

Previously, a pure ERP company and a major player in that segment, Ramco System's fortunes were hit in the last couple of years as the ERP market went into a tailspin. A global slowdown in the IT sector added to its woes. With a view to diversify, Ramco Systems made the transition from a pure ERP product firm into a complete vendor of solutions and services of enterprise applications. But to do so, it had to invest big in e.applications, a Net-based transaction processing solution for enterprises, and RamcoVirtualworks, a component-based architecture in which an application is developed by assembling pre-built components (thus cutting cost and time).

The financial performance of the company in the recent past is not very impressive. For the second quarter ended 30 September 2002, it registered a net loss of Rs 6.17 crore as compared to a loss of Rs 2.69 crore in the corresponding period last year. Net sales declined by 15.5% to Rs 25.47 crore from Rs 30.47 crore in SQ 2001.