Tata Consultancy Services reported its consolidated financial results according to US GAAP for the quarter ended December 31, 2008.
Highlights for Quarter Ended December 31, 2008
- Revenues at $1,483 million flat Y-o-Y; (5.8%) Q-o-Q
- Net Income at $276 m (18.0%) Y-o-Y; (3.5%) Q-0-Q
- EPS at $0.28 in Q3
- 41 new clients added in Q3
- 11,773 employees joined the company in Q3
- Attrition rate declined to 11.9 LTM
- Quarterly dividend of Rs 3 per share - 18th Consecutive Quarterly Dividend
Commenting on the performance, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, S. Ramadorai said: "In tough market conditions, TCS continues to perform in a stellar fashion, driving revenue growth through our diversified market presence and boosting our operational profitability by conserving costs and creating efficiencies." He added: "In its 40-year history, TCS has focused on institution building and value creation for all stakeholders.
We have paid dividends for 18 consecutive quarters. With our disciplined and professional approach to management, we have always been a role model for corporate governance highlighted by the company's transparency, ethics and integrity - values that flow from the Tata Group's Code of Conduct."
S. Mahalingam, Chief Financial Officer, said: "TCS has significant exposure in non-dollar denominated revenues and the depreciation in GBP, Euro, Australian Dollar and Brazilian Real has meant that the revenues earned in those currencies translated into a lower amount of dollars. This has impacted the revenue and profit growth in dollar terms, though in constant currency and absolute terms, the company's business continues to grow."
He added: "In the current environment, it is important to run a tight ship with sustainable cost control measures while continuing to invest for the future."
"In a challenging market, TCS remained focused on execution discipline and kept pricing stable and therefore managed to grow profitably along with margin impimprovement," said N. Chandrasekaran, Chief Operating Officer. "We have closed some key deals across markets and sectors, acquired 41 new customers and have a healthy pipeline of deals across our diversified customer base."
In terms of markets, North America appears to be stabilizing with TCS adding two new marquee customers during the quarter. TCS' strong pan-European presence and category leadership in UK helped the company significantly grow revenues in a sluggish market. Despite weak economic outlook, Latin America registered very strong demand, from both local companies and multinationals seeking GNDM capability.
The Indian market continued to see low capital spend by both public and private sector clients. Going forward government spending is expected to revive demand.
Consumer spending led sectors like Retail and Media & Entertainment exhibited resilience in the October-December quarter, while ramp-ups in large transformation deals signed in earlier quarters helped Retail and Life-Sciences verticals show strong growth.
Key Wins:
- A large transformational full services (IT/IS/BPO) outsourcing deal for a leading specialty retailer of North America.
- A multi year deal from a leading US-based Services company that will leverage GNDM and Full Services capabilities.
- Improve efficiency and drive optimization in the application portfolio for a leading US utility and bring innovation in their business.
- Multi year deal for prime application development and support for leading Canadian utility.
- Primary vendor for multi-million vendor consolidation initiative at a leading Investment Bank.
- Provide high quality and reliable case handling services to the clinical development group of a global pharma major.
"We have added over 30,400 people in the first nine months which is in line with our hiring plans for the financial year. Our retention rates for both IT services and BPO have shown significant improvement in the current quarter. We continue to focus on improving utilization rates and employee productivity," said Ajoy Mukherjee, Vice President & Head, Global Human Resources.
During Q3, there was a gross addition of 11,773 employees (net 8,692 employees) of which 8,704 were trainees and 1,696 were lateral recruits in India and 1,373 employees were added in overseas subsidiaries and branches.
The total employee base was 130,343 professionals and 52 per cent of the workforce had more than three years experience.
The utilisation rate (excluding trainees) was 79.9 per cent and the attrition rate in Q2 dropped to 11.9 per cent overall with 11.2 per cent attrition rate in the IT services business and 20.5 per cent attrition rate in BPO. Foreign nationals formed 9.1 per cent of the total employee base and 30 per cent were women.