HCL Tech consolidated Q3 net up 25%

BS 200 SCORECARD

HCL Technologies' board on Monday declared an interim dividend of 200 per cent per share having a having a face value of Rs 2 each.

The company's consolidated quarterly net profit grew 25 per cent to Rs 157.25 crore during January-March 2005 compared with Rs 125.82 crore in the corresponding period last year. Its gross revenues grew 31.9 per cent to Rs 858.22 crore.

"We expect the operating margins to be stable going forward," SL Narayanan, corporate vice president - finance, HCL Technologies said.

The company's income margin for the quarter dipped to 18.3 per cent (19.3 per cent) but net income margin for the nine months rose to 18.3 per cent from 16.9 per cent in the corresponding period last year. For the nine months ended March 2005, the company's consolidated net profit jumped by 47.2 per cent to Rs 442.09 crore (Rs 299.71 crore) while gross revenue rose 35.8 per cent to Rs 2408.77 crore (Rs 1773.85 crore).

"We are looking for land in Chennai to set up a campus there. We have acquired land in Bangalore and Noida for campus and they should be completed in about 30 months. The Noida centre would have a 15,000 seat capacity. The existing facility in Bangalore specialising in aerospace related IT work employs about 3,500 people. We have added 1,785 employees in the March quarter with 1,122 added in software services business and 498 in BPO," Narayanan said.

The major chunk of company's business continues to come from software services which accounts for 75.33 per cent of the business. With this quarter's dividend of Rs 127.39 crore the total interim dividend for the year stands at Rs 373.28 crore which comes to Rs 12 per share.