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Informist, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026

By Arya S. Biju and Narayana Krishna

MUMBAI/HYDERABAD – Information technology services major Wipro Ltd. may consider share buyback as an option to utilise its $6.5 billion gross cash reserve, its management said in a post-earnings call with analysts Friday. "...buyback will continue to be a means by which we will return cash to our shareholders. It's certainly an option on the table. And we will consider it at an appropriate time," Aparna C. Iyer, senior vice-president and chief financial officer of Wipro said. 

"...we've been having excess cash, and as a result of that... last year we increased our capital allocation, and we said that we would start increasing our dividend payouts. We did that...This year, we almost paid 11 rupees per share, which is about $1.3 billion," a top company management official said in the call. "We're not adding to the excess cash and leaving enough for, you know, a budget for whatever acquisitions and organic investments we need to make," the official added. 

All other statutory obligations for the buyback are "quite in the place", Iyer said, adding that the company will have discussions with its board on the share buyback at appropriate time. 

On the demand environment, the company's management noted that there is no substantial change amid continuing macroeconomic uncertainties. It expects clarity on discretionary spending to arise once US-based clients finalise their technology budget for 2026 this month. "We'll have a much better understanding and view of where they are (US-based clients) going to spend," said Srini Pallia, chief executive officer and managing director of the company. 

"...if I look at the current pipeline that we have, a significant piece of this pipeline is around cost optimisation and vendor consolidation (deals), which are the key levers for our clients. And they are using this as a lever for savings. And they want to reinvest these savings into AI capabilities and also some of the advanced transformation projects that they want to do", Pallia said. The company sees this as an optimal opportunity to capitalise and plans to make strategic bets in each of these sectors and markets. "From a full year of visibility... there is an opportunity in the market and the customer continue to remain in wait-and-watch mode," he added. 

For the December quarter, the company recorded total bookings of $3.34 billion, down around 6% on year in constant currency terms. Its large deal bookings for the quarter were $871 million, down over 8% on year in constant currency terms. Going forward, the company expects momentum in large deal wins to pick up. "We are contesting a lot of large deals. They are in the cycle. We are hopeful of closing them," a top company official said. On the delay in ramping up deals in the previous quarters, the company clarified that some of the deals, given their nature, will take time to ramp-up and is confident that they will ramp up.  

Among segments, the company said its deal pipeline in the energy, manufacturing and resources segment remains strong, with a significant part of the pipeline being either vendor consolidation or cost take-out deals. "We have good momentum on the pipeline in energy in both America and Europe. And as far as manufacturing is concerned, it's in Europe. I think our focus right now is to convert these deals, and then that should drive the revenue growth for us," a company official said. This segment had seen the impact of macroeconomic uncertainty and tariff-related concerns, Wipro said. During the December quarter, sales from the segment declined 5% sequentially and 6% on year in constant currency terms, the company said in a post-earnings press release. 

Wipro announced its December quarter earnings post-market hours Friday. The country's fourth-largest IT company by market capitalisation reported a consolidated net profit of INR 31.19 billion for the December quarter, down around 4% sequentially and 7% on year. This was also well below the INR 33.49 billion net profit estimated by the Street. Its revenue for the quarter grew around 4% sequentially and around 6% year over year to INR 235.56 billion, beating Street estimates of INR 233.88 billion by a slight margin.  

The company's bottom line for the quarter was hit by higher employee benefit expenses, including an INR 3.03 billion impact due to the new labour codes, which came into effect on Nov. 21. Adjusted for the impact of the new labour codes, the company's consolidated net profit for the quarter was INR 33.63 billion, up around 4% on quarter. This was in line with analysts' expectations. 

Friday, shares of the company closed 2.8% higher at INR 267.45 on the National Stock Exchange. End

Edited by Deepshikha Bhardwaj

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