Between Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Wipro and Infosys, the three bigwigs of the Indian IT space, it seems that that employees are jumping the ship at a rate faster than ever.

The annual attrition rate at Infosys stood at 18.9%, Wipro average at around 15% and TCS shed nearly 48,000 employees last year, averaging at 14.9% in the last quarter of fiscal year 2015.

Vishal Sikka-led Infosys is expected to see a 60-70-basis-point (bps) decline in its operating profit margin as it closes the fourth quarter of FY15 hit by cross-currency movements. At the same time, speculation is mounting that the IT major is close to announcing another acquisition in the digital domain.

Infosys, which will announce its results on Friday in Chennai, is not expected to buck the trend, as witnessed in the quarterly performances of TCS and Wipro, which recorded flattish revenue growth and tepid profits.

Mutual fund houses offloaded shares of pharmaceutical major Lupin Ltd, information technology (IT) giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Motilal Oswal Financial Services over the last two months.

While fund managers reduced their cash holdings and went on a buying spree over the last two months, they avoided these stocks.

The country's largest information technology (IT) services provider, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), believes the huge cash payout in FY15 will not affect its cash flow or its ability to invest in growth areas. The company also said that the idea behind the bonus payout was to allow the 250,000 employees to use it the way they want to.

Rajesh Gopinathan, chief financial officer, said that even after the payout of Rs 2,628 crore as employee bonus, the company is left with an additional cash reserve of Rs 1,000 crore.

The top ten stock picks of India's equity mutual fund managers underwent a sharp re-shuffle in 2014-15. MF managers not only changed their preferences for stocks but also ousted three heavyweight counters from their top holdings during the year, reducing concentration of equity assets in these stocks by around 440 basis points.

Sectoral giants - FMCG major ITC, largest software company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and oil explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) - were all out from the top picks.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)’ earnings for the quarter ended March this year were hit by a one-time bonus payment, currency headwinds and weakness in verticals such as telecom, energy and insurance.

According to International Financial Reporting Standards figures, the company reported a net profit of Rs 3,858 crore for the March quarter, down 27 per cent on an annual basis and 29 per cent in sequential terms. If the cumulative bonus payout of Rs 2,628 crore to employees isn’t factored in, profit for the quarter stands at Rs 5,905.9 crore, growth of 11.5 per cent annually and 8.5 per cent sequentially.

Inflation data, quarterly results of bluechips like TCS and RIL are expected to keep markets volatile in a holiday-shortened week ahead, say experts. Stock markets will remain closed on Tuesday for Baba Saheb Ambedkar Jayanti.

Besides, investment trend by foreign investors, movement of rupee against dollar and crude oil prices will also dictate trends on the bourses.

Infosys on Wednesday said it will announce its earnings for the fourth quarter and the fiscal ended March 2015 on April 24, a deviation from its usual practice of kicking off the corporate results season.

Instead, it will be India’s largest software services firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) that will announce its set of numbers on April 16.

Dilip Shanghvi-led Sun Pharma displaced IT major TCS for the first time in three financial years as the country’s best performing stock in terms of market cap growth.

As on Thursday, Sun Pharma’s market cap stood at R2.12 lakh crore, gaining R93,811 crore during the fiscal, while TCS yielded its least market-cap in the last three fiscals. The IT major’s market cap stood at R4.9 lakh crore as on Thursday. In FY15, TCS’ m-cap has improved by R74,422 crore. In FY14 and FY13, TCS has gained market cap of R1.09 lakh crore and R79,649 crore, respectively.

BENGALURU: Top software service exporters are under pressure to drop prices to retain contracts with marquee customers such as American Express and Home Depot that are up for renewal this year, according to executives and experts involved in the contract negotiations.

Rates have fallen by double digits for some of the biggest customer accounts in the past six months, with companies such as Infosys and Wipro sacrificing profit margins to gain market share and incremental revenue from these key accounts, they said. Retaining strategic outsourcing contracts - that generate at least $100 million annually - is crucial to top IT firms such as TCS, Infosys and Wipro for them to be to mine such accounts that could increase in scope over the years.

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