Wipro net dips; plans to buy back Rs 2,500 crore shares
In a bonanza to its shareholders, India’s third largest IT firm Wipro on Wednesday said that it will buy back up to four crore shares worth aro-und Rs 2,500 crore.
This represents 1.62 per cent of the total paid-up equity capital aggregating to 4 crore shares at a price of Rs 625 per share. Wipro stock on Wednesday closed at Rs 601.35 apiece, up 2.07 per cent from its previous close on the BSE.
On Wednesday, the company said that its consolidated net profit has dipped by 1.6 per cent to Rs 2,235 crore for the quarter ended March. This is against a net profit of Rs 2,272 crore in the same quarter last fiscal.
Wipro’s IT services margins fell by 10 basis points to 20.1 per cent in Q4FY16 compared to the prior quarter. On a year-on-year basis Wipro’s margins fell by two percentage points.
Its revenue, however, rose 12.9 per cent to Rs 13,741.7 crore during the reported quarter, from Rs 12,171 crore in the yearago period.
Calling his first opportunity to interact with the press since taking over as the CEO as a “special moment”, Wipro chief executive officer and Board member Abidali Z. Neemuchwala said he had met 70 of its top 100 cli-ents in the past few weeks.
“Our ambition is to be $15 billion by fiscal 2020 with 23 per cent operating margins. The core leadership team has laid out the ambition and we have done a tremendous amou-nt of detailing in terms of how to get there,” the CEO said, adding that the company will focus more on digital and automation under the new management team.