Wipro 3rd IT company to hit Rs 3 lakh crore mcap

(This story originally appeared in on Jun 04, 2021)

Bengaluru/Mumbai: touched a record Rs 3 lakh crore (or Rs 3 trillion) in market capitalisation, becoming only the third Indian IT company to do so after TCS and Infosys. The company’s shares have seen a strong rally over the past one year, suggesting investor confidence in its strategies under new CEO Thierry Delaporte.

Shares of the Azim Premji-owned company opened at Rs 546 on the BSE on Thursday, before touching an intra-day high of Rs 550, which took its market cap to a shade over Rs 3 lakh crore. The stock, however, pared the gains to close at Rs 539, down less than 1% from Wednesday’s close. “We believe Wipro’s strong full services capabilities across applications, infra, BPS (business process services) and engineering will help in winning integrated deals, and help win large deals as seen in recent quarters. Hence, we expect the company to register 21% YoY dollar revenue growth in FY22E (of which 13% is organic and rest through acquisition) and 13% YoY in FY23E,” ICICI said in a note to investors.

The performance under the previous two CEOs, Abidali Neemuchwala and T K Kurien, were far from remarkable, unlike those of some of Wipro’s peers. Growth was sluggish with bets on sectors like energy and healthcare going awry due to macroeconomic conditions and change in policies in the US.

Delaporte redefined the service lines for better focus and trimmed some senior management. Under him, the company won its largest deal ever, from German retailer Metro, and has built a healthy pipeline of digital deals. Wipro’s shares have risen 140% since he came on board.

India had 10 listed companies with more than Rs 3 lakh crore in mcap as of Thursday. Wipro became the 11th to touch the milestone, though by the end of the day it was slightly below that.