IT Stocks Boosted By Strong Accenture Earnings; Tech Mahindra, Persistent Systems Hit Fresh 52-Week High

Even as the benchmark Indian stock market index Nifty has plunged to levels of 17055 as of writing this copy at around 11:30 am, the Nifty IT index sustains its early gains. In fact among all the Nifty sectoral indices, while all other indices traded in the red, Nifty IT index has been the outlier with gains of close to 1.5%. At the open, the index started off with gains of 1.9%.

The IT pack has been boosted by strong Accenture earnings with 8 out of 10 constituents trading in the green. Shares of Tech Mahindra though have lost ground and are trading with a cut, in intra-day trade today have hit a fresh 52-week high of Rs. 1675. Likewise, Infosys shares that hit day's high price of Rs. 1833 trade close to its 52-week high price of Rs. 1848.

The Ireland based IT consulting firm Accenture Plc, following September-August financial year, reported a 27% YoY increase in revenue at $14.97 billion, considerably higher than the upper end of its provided guidance of $13.9 billion-$14.35 billion. Also at the same time, the company has increased its revenue estimates for the second quarter.

So, now the company estimates full-year revenue growth to come in at 19-22% as against the previous forecast of 12-15%. Also, the company expects EPS of $10.32-$10.60; and free cash flow to be $7.7 billion-$8.2 billion.

Hence the latest guidance upgrade by Accenture that provides for robust growth for IT firms going ahead has pushed IT stocks higher in trade today. Some of the stocks from the IT pack that saw considerable gains today include TCS, Infosys, Mphasis, HCL, Mindtree, Mastek, R Systems, Sasken (up 7%), Birlasoft and Persistent (up over 4%) among others.

Persistent Systems also in trade today hit a fresh 52-week high of Rs. 4752.10 apiece after ATOSS, a Germany-based software provider for workforce management selected Persistent Systems for revamping its customer relationship mamanagement with the help of Salesforce integrations.

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