Business News: Infosys Peaks on Q1 Success; Kataria IPO Oversubscribed; Top Stocks & Tech Issues Update

The Infosys stock surged to a fresh 52-week high of Rs 1,843 on BSE after declaring Q1 FY25 results despite the net profit falling by 20%. The revenue was at Rs 39,315 crore, an increase of a mere 3.7 per cent QoQ against Street estimates. This came with the company upgrading FY25 revenue growth guidance to 3-4 per cent. Most analysts still retained their positive view on the company with price targets of Rs 1,950-Rs 2,050 on the back of strong deal win and growth outlook, while one leading brokerage, Motilal Oswal, believes this spur in revenues may be short-lived.

Kataria Industries IPO, which closes today, July 19, has been oversubscribed 51.51 times as it received bids against the shares on offer. It was priced at Rs 91 to Rs 96 and retail subscriptions are subscribed 81.80 times and non-institutional 49.64 times. Grey market premium is standing at Rs 68, indicating that possibly there might be a 70.83 percent gain at listing. The IPO of 56.85 lakh shares would get the allotments finalized on July 22 and listing on NSE SME on July 24.

The Nifty50 index hit a fresh high of 24,800 on July 19. Stocks to watch today: RIL, Wipro, Infosys—both driven by Q1 results and news development. Net profit at Infosys decreased by 20.1 per cent at Rs 6,368 crore; L&T Technology Services missed the street estimates on revenue. There was a net loss posted by Shoppers Stop and a fall in profit for Rallis India. Dr. Reddy's signed a patent agreement with Takeda. While Tata Technologies and Persistent Systems posted a decline in profits, that of South Indian Bank surged 45.4%.

Wipro Q1 FY25 Results: Consolidated net profit rose by 4.63 percent YoY to Rs 3,003.2 crore, against a fall of 3.79 percent in revenue to Rs 21,963.8 crore. Sequentially, net profit was up by 5.94 percent. The company expects Q2 IT services revenue at $2,600 million-$2,652 million. Wipro's voluntary attrition stood at 14.1 percent. Management comments on large deal bookings and expansion in margins. Wipro shares fell 2.60 percent ahead of results. In contrast, TCS, Infosys and HCL turned in strong Q1 performances that beat market expectations.

State Bank of India said its systems were not impacted on account of the Microsoft global outage. "We did not face any problems at all," Chairman Dinesh Khara said. The outage, several Microsoft users, including those from India, flagged, has made a dent in flights, banking services, media companies and even corporations. According to Downdetector, users flagged disruptions across a range of services. Despite the disruptions mounting, Microsoft said it was 'slowly' resolving the problem affecting access to Microsoft 365 apps and services.

Governor Shaktikanta Das said the RBI has no intent to allow business houses to promote banks due to risks of conflict of interest and related party transactions. Speaking at an event organised by Financial Express, Das said experiences in several parts of the world and in India itself before the 1960 nationalization have shown the potentials for problems with the corporate-promoted banks. He added that what the economy needs is sound, well-managed banks. According to him, India needs healthy financial institutions to mobilize savings and meet credit needs. Das also said that the RBI takes note of the rapid growth of the private credit space and is watchful of likely financial stability concerns.

While platform-specific technical issues hurt volumes at 5paisa, Groww, and Motilal Oswal, the BSE and NSE said their systems were not impacted due to the global Microsoft outage. There have been widespread reports of service disruptions by users of Microsoft globally, including in India. The National Stock Exchange and the BSE said all operations at bourses are going on normally. Brokerage firms, including IIFL Securities and 5paisa, said they were grappling with some issues following a global glitch in Crowdstrike antivirus software. IIFL informed clients that it is working toward resolving the antivirus problem, which has been causing system reboots and blue screens.

With the deadline for filing of ITR on July 31 nearing, 3.42 crore returns have been filed for AY 2024-25. However, the ITBA has demanded that the deadline be extended to August 31, citing continuous problems on the I-T portal, including slow speeds, upload problems and issues relating to Aadhaar OTP verification. It was further highlighted by the ITBA that challenges confronted by taxpayers as well as professionals, among others, have resulted in the current number of filings to be very less as compared to previous years due to such technical glitches.