Net income rose to 4.7 billion rupees ($104 million), or 3.32 rupees a share, in the three months ended Sept. 30, from 3.84 billion rupees, or 2.74, a year ago, the Bangalore-based company said in a statement today. The result was in line with analyst estimates. Sales rose 26 percent to 25 billion rupees.
India's biggest ``computer-software companies, including Wipro, are eyeing orders that usually went to companies such as Accenture Ltd. and International Business Machines Corp.,'' said Navneet Munot, who helps manage the equivalent of $2 billion at Birla Sun Life Asset Management Co. in Mumbai.
Eleven analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a median 4.69 billion rupees for net income. Wipro reports earnings under U.S. accounting rules.
Wipro's Global IT Services & Products unit, which serves customers outside Asia, will have sales of about $463 million in the three months ending Dec. 31, according to the statement. North America accounted for 63 percent of the global information technology unit's revenue and Europe 32 percent, it said.
The unit added 39 clients in the second quarter, including ``a global pharmaceutical company, a leading online auction player, and a leading global manufacturer of consumer products,'' the company said. The unit hired a net 4,575 new employees.
At its Wipro BPO call-center and transaction-processing unit, the number of employees fell by 651 in the period to 12,979. Sales at the unit rose 9 percent to 1.82 billion rupees from 1.67 billion rupees a year earlier.
Wipro is reorganizing the BPO unit to focus on the more profitable business of processing transactions such as medical and insurance claims. Wipro BPO earns more than 80 percent of sales from voice-related services such as the technical help desks it runs for clients.
The focus on transaction processing is boosting profitability in the unit, Chief Financial Officer Suresh Senapaty said in an interview, without providing details.
Wipro plans to raise employee wages in India by 12 percent starting Nov. 1, Senapaty said in an interview, which would crimp the company's profit margin by 1.5 percentage points. Last year's salary raises were an average 18 percent.
Indian software makers are raising employee salaries to retain people in a country where the average wages are forecast to rise by more than 11 percent, compared with a global average of 2.4 percent, according to a study by Mercer Human Resource Consulting in October.
IBM, the world's biggest computer-services company, plans to hire 14,000 workers in India by December to boost the workforce to 38,196 in the country, according to the Seattle-based Washington Alliance of Technology Workers union's Web site.
Accenture, the world's second-largest consultant to businesses, said it will increase the number of employees in India, China and Philippines to as many as 50,000 over the next three years from 19,000.
Wipro's operating margin -- the percentage of net sales left after subtracting production, marketing and some other costs -- for the unit that serves customers outside Asia-Pacific declined by about 3.1 percentage points to 23.8 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier.
Wipro had a 55 million rupee gain in the quarter because the Indian rupee weakened against the U.S. dollar. The Indian currency declined by more than 1 percent against the dollar in the quarter ended Sept. 30, as imports rose faster than exports and foreign currency inflows slowed.
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