Infosys Q1 profit rises 33%, meets forecast

Infosys Ltd , India's second-largest software services exporter, matched expectations with a 33 percent rise in its fiscal first-quarter profit, bolstered by a surge in demand for outsourcing services and a fall in the rupee.

India's $100 billion-a-year IT and back-office outsourcing sector earns about three-quarters of its revenues from customers in the United States and Europe, and faces intense competition from global rivals including IBM and Accenture .

Net profit for Infosys, whose customers include Bank of America , BT Group and GlaxoSmithKline Plc , rose to 22.89 billion rupees in the quarter ended June from 17.2 billion rupees a year earlier.

 

Analysts had forecast a net profit of 23 billion rupees for the Bangalore-based company, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Infosys and its domestic rivals Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro are part of the country's export-driven outsourcing sector that has benefited from increase in demand for outsourcing to cut costs and boost efficiency.

But prevailing global economic uncertainty, cutthroat competition for a bigger share of the outsourcing business and sharp currency fluctuations have slowed the showpiece sector's pace of growth.

(Editing by Matt Driskill and Ryan Woo)