Infosys posts Q4 results for the financial year 2016-17

The Software biggie has announced Rs. 13,000 crore dividend bouquet for its shareholders in FY18.

Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka announced the Q4 results of the IT major on Thursday the 13th of April in Bangalore at the company headquarters. The event comes at a time when ripples across US and Europe are moving towards nationalist policies threatening the Indian IT industry and its workers.

The numbers 
The results have projected a growth of 6.5-8.5%, lower than the forecast by analysts at 7-9%, the company posted a revenue of  Rs. 17,120 crore, lesser than the last quarter revenue by 866 crores. And the company's net profit stood at Rs 3,603 crore.

The highlight of the event
The biggest announcement, however, is that the company will pay its investors Rs. 13,000 as dividends from the next financial year onwards. "The company currently pays dividends up to 50 percent of the post-tax profits and it has decided to increase this to 70 percent of the free cash flow from the coming financial year," said Dipankar Datta, a stock broker based out of Bangalore. "This announcement was anticipated as other IT biggies like TCS had announced a buyback of Rs. 16,000 crore recently" he added.

A new co-chairman
Another surprise was the company's decision to add one more co-chairman to its stable, Ravi Venkateshan, the former chairman of Microsoft India. He will chair the company alongside R Seshasayee.




Loyalty of Employees 
Amidst adverse indicators the company scored a green in the employee forefront by adding 601 employees, making its team into 2,00,364 strong, the company was able to reduce attrition to a 17.1 percent by better employee engagement.

The global performance
The report also painted the company's state of business in parts of the world. In the US, the company grew by 1.2 percent however the business in Europe saw a decline of 1.6 percent and in India despite the slew of e-governance transformations and rise in demand for internet based payment networks the company saw a down-slide of 6.9 percent.

Reactions
The markets gave 3.86 percent thumbs down on the BSE for the company's share prices. This sentiment got reflected across the sector with other majors like TCS and Cognizant also trading in negative.

"The projections are lower than what we expected, with such conservative calculations the achievement of Rs 13,000 crore payout seems to be a little-overrated one," said Dipankar Datta, a stock broker based out of Bangalore.

Source: Infosys; Results for the Fourth Quarter and Year ended March 31, 2016