HCL Technologies' quarterly profit beats estimates

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's HCL Technologies Ltd beat analysts' estimates for quarterly profit on Friday as it added more high-net worth clients and generated strong growth at its software services business.

Net profit attributable to shareholders rose to 24.31 billion rupees ($353.73 million) in the quarter ended June 30, from 22.11 billion rupees, the IT company said on Friday. Analysts were expecting 22.96 billion rupees, as per Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue from operations rose 14.2 percent to 138.78 billion rupees led largely by a 15.6 percent jump in its software services unit, its main revenue generator.

In dollar terms, HCL became India's No. 3 IT firm on a quarterly basis as it posted a revenue of $2.05 billion, just ahead of rival Wipro's IT services revenue of 2.03 billion.

For the fiscal year ending in March 2018 though, Wipro was India's No. 3 IT services firm by revenue.

HCL said it expected revenues to grow between 9.5 percent to 11.5 percent in constant currency terms in the fiscal year to end-March 2019.

The outlook was more upbeat than Wipro's which, earlier this month said it expected its services segment revenues to growth between 0.3 percent and 2.3 percent from its current revenue of $2.03 billion.

($1 = 68.7250 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal and Aparajita Saxena; Editing by Vyas Mohan and Keith Weir)