There are very few takers for B Ramalinga Raju’s astounding claim that the margin earned by Satyam in the quarter ended September 2008 was just 3 per cent, and not 24 per cent as reported in the results.
Analysts say Raju’s “confession” on mis-reporting of margins over the last several years is far too facile. It is true that Satyam Computer Services, which was till recently known as India’s fourth largest software services firm, had the highest employee cost to sales ratio of around 60 per cent in the last three years compared to 50-53 per cent reported by Infosys and TCS.
But that hardly explains why Satyam’s actual margin will be a mere one-tenth of what enjoyed by the top three IT companies — TCS, Infosys and Wipro. Even at 24 per cent, Satyam’s margin was 8-10 per cent lower than them, but one-tenth is just impossible – a sound reason why analysts want regulatory agencies to verify Raju’s claims in his so-called tell-all letter.
The 3 per cent margin would place Satyam Computer far below mid-cap companies such as Tech Mahindra, Mphasis, Patni Computer, Oracle Financial and Rolta India. This is again impossible as Satyam has a much larger clientele and would certainly bill its clients at much higher rates compared to these smaller firms.
All these companies, which reported over 20 per cent operating margins in the second quarter ended September 2008, had a combined market capitalisation of Rs 14,400 crore on a quarterly net sales of Rs 3,700 crore. Satyam had a market cap of Rs 15,262 crore on a reported quarterly net sales of Rs 2,800 crore before the Maytas episode came to light.
| BOTTOM LINE Quarterly operating margins of IT firms (%) | ||||
| Company | Dec '07 | Mar '08 | Jun '08 | Sep '08 |
| Satyam Computer | 24.3 | 23.55 | 25.17 | 3.00* |
| Infosys Tech | 36.29 | 35.6 | 32.88 | 34.33 |
| TCS | 28.36 | 26.97 | 24.9 | 23.66 |
| Wipro | 20.75 | 20.6 | 20.39 | 20.13 |
| MID CAP FIRMS | ||||
| Tech Mahindra | 24.87 | -20.92 | 28.01 | 31.03 |
| Patni Computer | 38.49 | 17.45 | 19.91 | 25.23 |
| MphasiS | 17.03 | 16.61 | 17.03 | 23.12 |
| Oracle Financial | 22.39 | 31.99 | 20.92 | 22.4 |
| Rolta India | 42.62 | 38.59 | 30.76 | 20.83 |
| SMALL CAP FIRMS | ||||
| Prithvi Info | 11.22 | -1.08 | -1.12 | 6.41 |
| Cambridge Solution | 5.95 | 4.54 | 5.83 | 4.23 |
| Tele Data Infor | 6.98 | 7.06 | 4.59 | 4.11 |
| * Re-estimated by the former chairman of Satyam Computer against the reported margins of 25.4% | ||||
If Raju’s claim of 3 per cent margin was to be taken at face value, Satyam’s is below even small-cap companies such as Tele Data Informatics, Cambridge Solutions and Prithvi Information Solutions, which had operating margins of around 4-6 per cent during the second quarter.
