CLSA cheers for Infosys shares ahead of Q3 results, buy to gain up to 20%

Global research firm CLSA reiterated its bullishness on the shares of India’s second-largest software exporter Infosys, and upped its target price on the shares to Rs 1,230 from Rs 1,140 earlier. Infosys shares were trading at Rs 1,025.55 on NSE this morning, up by more than 1.3%. CLSA’s target price implies an upside of more than 20% from the current market prices. “Infosys just saw through one of its worst recent years but the company has the potential of completing strategic retooling and improve capital allocation,” CLSA said in its report.

Notably, the IT bell-whether had been an underperformer in the preceding calendar year, with the shares returning below 5% in the year. The company is slated to announce its first quarterly earnings under newly appointed CEO & MD Salil Parekh on January 12.

Most global brokerages expect Infosys to report a constant revenue growth of 1.2% and maintain a guidance of 5.5-6.5% constant currency revenue growth and 23-25% EBIT margin.

“We expect constant currency revenue growth of 1.2 percent and negligible cross-currency impact. We expect flat EBIT margin; impact of weakness in revenue growth would be offset by operational efficiencies,” Kotak Institutional Equities said in a note.

Notably, this will be the first quarterly result of the company, post the appointment of new CEO Salil Parekh, who took over the rein on January 2. “Salil brings hugely relevant experience to Infosys,” Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys said during Salil Parekh’s appointment in December-17. “He will fit into our culture and, at the same time, bring about the required transformation.” Reacting to this appointment, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairperson of the Nomination & Remuneration Committee said.

Infosys had cut its annual revenue forecast to 6.5 percent to 7.5 percent growth for the year ending March 2018 in US dollar terms, versus the 7.6 percent rise analysts were anticipating. Before the internal upheaval involving co-founder Narayana Murthy’s letter addressing governance issues in the organisation, Infosys had forecast a 7.1 percent to 9.1 percent climb in revenue for the year ending March 2018 on a US dollar basis.

“We estimate Infosys to post 1.4 percent QoQ growth in USD terms, impacted 10bps by cross currency, implying 1.5 percent QoQ constant currency (cc) growth. With clients increasingly adopting Nia, Panaya, Skava & Edge, new technologies are expected to drive revenue during the quarter,” Edelweiss Securities said in a note.