Bangalore, Oct 31 (IANS): India's third largest IT bellwether Wipro Monday reported marginal growth year-on-year (YoY) in net profit for the second quarter (July-September) and projected a flat sequential revenue growth from its global IT services for the third quarter of this fiscal.

As per the Indian accounting standard, net profit grew a mere one percent YoY to Rs.1,301 crore (Rs.13 billion) for the quarter under review (Q2) though it was a decline of 2.5 percent sequentially from previous quarter (April-June) at Rs.1,335 crore (Rs.13.35 billion).

Total income, however, rose 18 percent YoY to Rs.9,094 crore (Rs.90 billion/$1.85 billion), reflecting a sequential growth of 6.2 percent.

Under the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS), net income is $265 million and gross income $1.85 billion for the quarter.

Projecting a cautious outlook due to macro-economic uncertainty, the global software major said revenue from its global IT services would be in the range of $1,500-1,530 million ($1.5 billion) in the third quarter (Q3), same as in second quarter at $1,472 million ($1.5 billion), a sequential growth of 4.6 percent.

"Macro-economic sentiments continue to remain uncertain. We have seen growth momentum build up in our IT business with healthy volume growth. Our focused investment strategy will get business to a higher growth trajectory," Wipro chairman Azim Premji said in a statement here.

The company's flagship business (global IT services) revenue, in rupee terms grew 16 percent YoY and seven percent sequentially to Rs.6,829 crore (Rs.68.3 billion) and accounted for 75 percent of the total revenue and 92 percent of operating income for the quarter.

"We are continuing to see incremental progress in our client mining strategy with five customers contributing over $100 million and our top customer hitting a run-rate of $200 million," Wipro chief financial officer Suresh Senapaty said.

Operating margins, however, declined two percent sequentially to 20 percent from 22 percent in the first quarter (Q1).

"We had an impact on operating margins in the quarter due to salary increases," Senapaty admitted.

The company added 44 customers during the quarter as against 49 in first quarter of this fiscal and 29 a year ago and had a repeat business of 98.6 percent as against 99 percent a year ago. As a result, total number of customers increased to 930 from 890 year ago but declined sequentially from 937 from the first quarter.

"We have had a strong quarter with revenues ahead of the upper end of the guided range. We continue to build differentiation and business value through our focus on key themes - varibilisation, consumerisation, performance analytics and innovation in a world of constraints," chief executive T.K. Kurien said.

The IT services business added about 5,240 (net addition) engineers during the quarter, taking the total headcount to 131,730 from 126,490 in first quarter and 115,900 year ago.