DNA Money Edit: What TCS tells stock investors

As Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's biggest software exporter, marches ahead with another good quarterly performance, here are a few learnings for India Inc. The quarterly performance is in line with the Street's expectations, with a 22.6% year-on-year rise in profit at Rs 7,901 crore and a 20.7% jump in revenue to Rs 36,854 crore. It is evident that revenue growth was driven by expanding demand for digital transformation across verticals. Its continued acceleration in banking and financial vertical and retail has helped the company register higher revenues. Four new clients in the $100-million club and seven in over $20 million band have made a lot of difference to its topline growth.

While the industry faces an unprecedented job turnover, TCS kept its attrition levels pretty low (10.9%). Shrugging off all prophesies, TCS added 10,227 employees on a net basis, the highest addition in 12 quarters, taking the total employee count to 4,11,102 by September-end. The percentage of women in the workforce rose further to a whopping 35.7% while the total number of nationalities represented grew to 147.

While Trump's strictures created challenges in the US for Indian IT companies, TCS's revenue growth was led by the UK (22.8%), Europe (17.4%), and Asia Pacific (12.5%). Its growth in North America too accelerated to 8.1% against 7% in the first quarter.