Wipro net up 38 per cent; says system was attacked
Mumbai: The country’s third largest IT firm Wipro on Tuesday reported a 37.74 per cent year-on-year (YoY) rise in March quarter consolidated profit at Rs 2,483 crore, driven mainly by strong performance in its banking, financial services and insurance segment.
Wipro’s consolidated revenue rose 8.98 per cent to Rs 15,006.30 crore from Rs 13,768.60 crore a year ago, aided by an 11 per cent growth in IT services.
The company’s board also approved a share buyback of 3.23 crore shares at Rs 325 apiece, aggregating Rs 10,500 crore. This would be its third buyback programme as it had undertaken Rs 2,500 crore and Rs 11,000 crore buyback offers in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
Wipro said a few of its employee accounts were affected in an "advanced phishing campaign", and the company has taken remedial steps to contain and mitigate any potential impact. It has also retained an independent forensic firm to assist the company in its investigation of the matter.
Cybersecurity blog KrebsOnSecurity had said that Wipro's systems had been breached and were being used to launch attacks against some of its clients.
"We detected a potentially abnormal activity in a few employee accounts on our network due to an advanced phishing campaign," Wipro said in an emailed statement.
KrebsOnSecurity cited sources to state that Wipro was "dealing with a multi-month intrusion from an assumed state-sponsored attacker" and that Wipro's systems were seen being used as jumping-off points for digital fishing expeditions targeting at least a dozen Wipro customer system
Meanwhile, the company said its board has not recommended any final dividend and the interim dividend of Re 1 declared on January 18 shall be considered as the final dividend for 2018-19. Thus, the total dividend for 2018-19 remains Re 1 per share.
Commenting on Q4 earnings, Wipro CEO and Executive Director Abidali Z Neemuchwala said: "Our teams have executed well on our strategy, which has resulted in consistent improvement of YoY growth each quarter.”