India's Infosys narrows annual revenue growth forecast

BENGALURU (Reuters) -India's second-largest IT services exporter Infosys on Thursday raised the lower end of its annual revenue growth forecast after second-quarter revenue beat estimates on strong performance in financial services and manufacturing. Consolidated sales rose 8.5% on-year to 444.9 billion rupees ($5.06 billion) in the September quarter. Analysts, on average, expected 439.29 billion rupees, as per data compiled by LSEG. For the full year, Infosys expects revenue growth in the range of to 2%-3% from the earlier estimate of 1%-3%. The Bengaluru-based firm's net profit rose 13.19% to 73.64 billion rupees, beating estimates of 72.01 billion rupees. Large deal bookings, or deals over $50 million as Infosys defines them, came in at $3.1 billion during the quarter, compared with $3.8 billion in the previous quarter and $2.4 billion in the year-ago period. Infosys saw revenue grow in five of its verticals, with that from its largest market, North America, up 2%. Peers Tata Consultancy Services, HCLTech and Tech Mahindra also beat quarterly revenue estimates and said they expect the second half of this fiscal to be better than the first in terms of overall demand. Infosys' Mumbai-listed shares closed 0.2% lower ahead of the results, and are down 21.8% this year. ($1 = 87.8590 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Haripriya Suresh; Editing by Savio D'Souza and Nivedita Bhattacharjee)

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