Welcome, everyone, to our Kodathi campus. For those of us who are joining virtually, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. We will begin the press conference for Wipro's second quarter earnings. My name is Nisha Chandrasekaran. I'm part of the external communications team, and I will be your moderator for today. Joining me on stage is our Chief Financial Officer, Aparna Iyer, our Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Srini Pallia, and our Chief Human Resources Officer, Saurabh Govil. We will begin with opening remarks from our CEO, followed by a financial review from our CFO. Post that, we'll open the floor for your questions. With that, let me hand over to our CEO and Managing Director, Srini Pallia.
Thank you, Nisha. Good evening, and thank you all for joining us today. In Quarter 2, our IT services revenue stood at $2.6 billion, with a sequential growth of 0.3% in constant currency. Our adjusted operating margin for this quarter was 17.2%. This is within the narrow band we had previously indicated, and it's an improvement of 0.4% compared to the same period last year. Let me now walk you through some of the highlights and key moments from this quarter. Within our markets, three of the four SMUs reported sequential growth. Americas 1 delivered sequential and year-on-year growth driven by strong performance in healthcare, technology, and communications sectors. While Americas 2 saw a decline this quarter, we remain confident about the future growth in this region, as some of the deals we have won in the first half are now beginning to ramp up.
Europe presented sequential growth in Quarter 2 after several quarters led by BFSI. In fact, the Phoenix deal is set to start generating revenue from Quarter 3, providing further momentum to Europe. APMEA growth was fueled by strong results in India, Australia, and Southeast Asia. Capco grew both sequentially and year-on-year, with momentum coming from newer markets, including LATAM and APMEA. Turning to our industry sectors now, we continue to see momentum in BFSI, with our clients prioritizing on cost optimization, vendor consolidation, legacy modernization, and, of course, scaled deployment of agentic AI. Tariff uncertainties continue to impact consumer, energy and manufacturing sectors, leading our customers to reevaluate their supply chains. In technology and communications, the focus is on accelerating AI adoption and also developing industry-specific solutions, with cost optimization remaining central to them.
Healthcare, in fact, especially in the U.S., is undergoing structural changes, and we are actively supporting clients through this transition. Of course, this sector remains one of our strong performers. Coming to deal wins and pipeline. This quarter, we closed $4.7 billion in total contract value and signed 13 large deals. Much of this demand is driven by vendor consolidations, AI-powered transformations, and consulting-led programs, areas where our strategy is truly making an impact. Our order books this quarter include two mega deals, one with a healthcare client and another in BFSI. While a significant portion of these two deals are renewals, they are very important for deepening our presence and unlocking future growth in these accounts. We are also seeing strong momentum in Europe, and I want to highlight two examples that bring this to life.
First, Wipro has formed a strategic multi-year partnership with a leading UK financial company to modernize their business. We are using our WeG A I platform and building a new center of excellence to drive this change for the bank, helping them improve customer experience, streamlining their back office operations, and in addition, bringing in advanced AI to both their business and technology streams. To give you examples, HR, mortgages, financial crime prevention, and of course, IT. This will optimize workflows and support real-time decisions for them. Above all, it will help our client become more resilient for the future. In my second example in Europe, we are partnering with a leading distribution and logistics company on a multi-year transformation for their operations and IT.
By leveraging our expertise in operating model design, process standardization, and technology modernization, we are helping them move to a unified digital core, making their operations more efficient and unlocking long-term growth with AI and digital tools. Now, I am excited to introduce Wipro Intelligence, which is our unified suite of AI-powered platforms and solutions and transformative offerings. With Wipro Intelligence, we will be enabling our clients to scale with confidence and lead in an AI-first world. It strengthens our consulting-led approach, driving innovation and delivering measurable outcomes for our clients. In fact, Wipro Intelligence brings together advanced capabilities across both delivery and industry platforms. In fact, our delivery platforms are already accelerating work from software development, cloud, and infrastructure to business process operations, and on the industry side, we have reimagined core business processes and developed more than 200 AI agents and platforms spanning multiple sectors.
As AI continues to evolve every day, we are helping clients experiment, adapt, and scale rapidly by working closely with our partners, ventures, and few leading research institutions. Wipro Intelligence is about proof, not just promise. So we embed productivity gains, assure business outcomes, and build responsible AI guardrails for our clients. Let me share three examples of these solutions. One, AutoCortex for automotive, Wealth AI for BFSI, and Payer AI for healthcare. Each is already making a tangible difference for our clients where we have implemented these solutions, and this has earned strong recommendations from industry analysts. This momentum gives us real confidence for the future. With that, let me move on to our forecast for the next quarter. In Quarter 3, we are projecting sequential IT services revenue growth of -0.5% to +1.5% in constant currency.
Let me reiterate, our priority remains converting our strong backlog into revenue while maintaining operational discipline to ensure profitable growth. And with that, I'll hand over to Aparna, who will take you through the financials in more detail. Over to you, Aparna.
Good evening, everyone. Thank you, Srini. Let me share an update on the financial performance of the quarter ended 30th September 2025 before we start the Q&A session. Our IT services revenue for Q2 grew 0.3% sequentially in constant currency terms and 0.7% sequentially in reported currency. These numbers are well within our guided range. Revenues declined 2.6% year-on-year in constant currency terms. Our operating margins in Q2 were at 16.7%. This is a contraction of 60 basis points quarter on quarter and 10 basis points year-on-year. Our operating margin was impacted by a one-off charge taken on account of a customer bankruptcy event. Adjusted for this event, our margins were at 17.2%, an expansion of 40 basis points year-on-year. This is also within the narrow band that we had called out in our last earnings.
As we invest for growth, we do see pressure to be there on our operating margins, but our intent would be to maintain it in this narrow band of an adjusted 17.2%. Let me give you some color on our strategic market unit and sector performance. All the growth numbers that I will share will be in constant currency. Americas 1 grew 0.5% sequentially and 5% on a year-on-year basis. Americas 2 declined 2% sequentially and declined 5.2% on a year-on-year basis. Europe grew sequentially 1.4% and declined 10% on a year-on-year basis. APMEA grew 3% sequentially and grew 2.6% on a year-on-year basis. Moving on to the sector performance, BFSI grew 2.2% sequentially and declined 4% year-on-year. Healthcare declined 0.2% sequentially and grew 3.9% year-on-year. Consumer as a sector declined 1.7% sequentially and also declined 7.4% year-on-year.
Technology and communication grew 0.8% sequentially and declined 1.7% on a year-on-year basis. EMR declined 1.5% sequentially and also declined 0.5% on a year-on-year basis. Capco continues to perform well, growing 3.2% on a year-on-year basis. Let me share with you certain other key financial parameters. Our net income and EPS grew 1% year-on-year in Q2. Our operating cash flows continue to be higher than the net income and stood at 104% of the net income for Q2. Our gross cash, including investments, was at $6 billion. Our net income declined 14% year-on-year. Accounting yield for our average investments held in India was at 7.1%. Our ETR was at 23.8% for this quarter versus 24.6% in the same period last year.
In terms of guidance, to reiterate what Srini shared, we expect the revenues from our IT services business segment to be in the range of $2.59 billion-$2.64 billion. This translates to a sequential guidance of -0.5% to +1.5% in constant currency terms. The Harman Digital Transformation Solutions acquisitions that we had earlier announced is expected to close during the quarter. However, our guidance numbers do not factor any revenues from this acquisition. Thank you and wish you all a happy Diwali in advance. I'll open the floor for your questions for all the journalists who have joined from outside of Bengaluru. Please key in your questions in the Teams chat, and we will try to accommodate as many as we can. For journalists present in the room, please raise your hand, and we'll pass the mic to you.
To ensure that everyone has a chance, we request that you limit your questions to two. We will definitely come back to you if there's time, and please introduce yourself and your publication before you ask your question. Do you want to? Should we start with Rohit?
Hi guys. Congratulations on your results. This is Rohit from Businessw orld. I wanted to get a perspective on what the demand environment is kind of looking like for you guys this quarter versus what it was in the past a few quarters. If you can talk about tariff impacts a bit more and what are your US clients saying would be the impact for the rest of the FY26?
Could you repeat that?
US?
US clients.
US clients.
What is the commentary from them and what are the impacts?
Okay. So I think thanks, Rohit. From a demand perspective, what I would say is if I look at our pipeline, in the last first half of this year, we closed close to $9.5 billion worth of TCV. With that booked already, we still have a robust pipeline. So that's very important because I know you have depleted so much through bookings, but do you have the pipeline? That's number one. Second, if you look at the demand, there are three clear opportunities that we have. One is vendor consolidation and cost optimization for our clients. So that clearly continues. Second, as the new demand that's picking up, which is on AI, clients want to move away from proof of concepts to actually implementing AI and agentic AI across their business process and also workflows. That's the second one that we are looking at.
Third, it's also creating, AI is also creating new opportunities for us to be truly consulting-led in terms of AI advisory, data advisory, and also the fact that the whole change management, that AI actually drives the organization to make sure the organizations are reliable, secure, ethical, and so on and so forth, having the right guardrails. I think those are the new opportunities that are generating. So demand continues to be strong. As far as the U.S. clients are concerned, right, if you look at it, this is a quarter where most of our clients will go in for a budgeting process. So as we meet our clients in the next couple of months, we'll get to know. I think the clarity will come more in the month of January.
But having said that, the three areas that I talked about is something which is in top of the mind for each of our customers. If you look at by industry, it could vary a little bit. The way I see it is consumer, energy, and manufacturing. They are obviously looking at the supply chains. They're looking at the tariff and how things pan out. But they're also looking at what they should be doing in the context of AI to reduce their broader context of cost. If you look at banking and financial services company, they want to modernize their core so they can accelerate their implementation of AI. So that's the kind of demand environment. That's how we see the U.S. clients thinking right now.
Ayanti, before we go to you, can I just ask one of the questions which we've got from online from Reuters? What is the outlook on pickup in discretionary spending, and are there any particular verticals where there is revival?
So good question. As far as the discretionary spend is concerned, I'm not seeing a dramatic uptick. But having said that, the spend is now moving more, discretionary spend is moving more and more into AI-related projects. But it's also important for the clients, right, as they're budgeting, to take the cost out. That's where I said a lot of demand we see in terms of vendor consolidation, cost optimization. But discretionary spend, we will get to have a better view in the month of January or in the month of December as they finalize their budgeting process.
The second part was any particular verticals that you're seeing revivals?
So if you look at, again, I can speak from the pipeline that we have as of today. Clearly, BFSI continues to have a good demand from an industry perspective. We also see tech and communication companies investing, and we see the pipeline in that aspect. I would say healthcare, again, continues to be robust in terms of our pipeline. A little bit weakness in consumer, energy, and manufacturing in the context of discretionary spend, but they continue to focus on cost optimization.
Thank you, Srini. Ayanti, you can go next.
Hi, I'm Ayanti from Financial Express. I have two specific questions. First one to Srini. We are seeing divergent AI strategies from top IT firms in India. While one is going to keep an intensive path, there are others going for an asset-light model. What is Wipro's AI strategy with Wipro Intelligence in particular, also if you could?
Sorry, I didn't get your name.
Ayante.
Is this the first time you heard, Ayanti?
Second time.
Second time, okay. Because I was not familiar with Ayanti. So thanks for coming, Ayanti. So I think the reason why we launched Wipro Intelligence, right? And if you look at it, the way our strategy is based on what you have seen is one is there's going to be a lot of platform play. The platform play will be on our delivery and also on the industry platforms. For example, if you look at in delivery, the way we do run and operate, whether it's application support and maintenance, whether it's infrastructure or it's business process outsourcing, we are going to use Wings, which is our AI platform, to have an end-to-end view of AI data and optimization. If you look at Vega, which is our platform for build and transformation programs, right? That's how we are going to continue to build.
Now, going the way I see Wipro Intelligence impacting our clients is we have platforms which are within the guardrails for them to actually implement, and that's where the industry platform that I talked about, AutoCortex, Payer AI, Wealth AI, those are the opportunities that are driving us. On the second part is the clients are looking at co-innovating with us, and one of the large banks that we talked about in the UK, we are helping build a center of excellence so that we can infuse AI into their current operations. They can fast-track their cost optimization, efficiency, and the velocity with which they can serve their end customers, so Wipro Intelligence addresses all the needs of our clients industry by industry.
That sounds fair. My second question to Saurabh, you had mentioned last quarter that the company will approach hiring based on the demand. And now we are seeing a better demand outlook for H2 across the top IT firms. So what are the plans for hiring for the second half of the year, particularly in terms of campus recruitment? And also, are there any updates on wage hikes for this year?
So if you look at our numbers, we went for campus hiring. We onboarded about 2,900 freshers in this quarter. This is in spite of a lower attrition from the previous quarter, a better utilization from a people supply chain standpoint. And we will continue to hire based on demand. We will continue to look at campuses. Q3, the number of days of working days are less, but otherwise, depending on demand, and we have seen the first half, bookings have been very robust. And as Srini called out, intent is to convert these bookings into revenue. So we will look at need demand base, and we will continue to honor program for campuses as well. So we will, whatever commitments we have made, we'll do. Our overall headcount has gone up for the quarter. So that's a positive. Sorry, wage hikes, the macro environment continues to be uncertain.
We haven't taken a call yet. As soon as we take a call, we will let everybody know. But we haven't decided when the wage hikes will be as of now.
Srishti, would you like to go next?
Hi, I'm Srishti from The Economic Times. So I have a quick question on your deal bookings. So the total contract value this quarter sequentially saw a decrease. So is this an indication of the deal pricing cut that we're seeing across the board in the sector?
Sorry, are you asking whether the reduction in bookings is owing to competitive pricing?
Yes.
No. That's not the case.
Bookings are quite robust. They've grown tremendously on a year-on-year basis. This is one of our largest bookings quarters. There was no impact of any pricing pressure on that.
The point is that in quarter one, we had significant bookings with two mega deals. We also have two mega deals this quarter, but it's more on the renewal side. Having said that, I agree with what Aparna said. It's nothing to do with that aspect of pricing.
So, the second question I have is with the Europe quarter. So, I mean, across the board, even with Wipro, you're seeing steady growth with the Europe segment as such. So, I wanted to see what outlook you have in sort of a growth momentum in that particular.
I can speak for last quarter. Like I said, one of the things I came back, I used to constantly tell every quarter is that Europe has been declining. I said that we have the robust pipeline, and we need to convert that pipeline and convert that into revenue. I think it started with quarter two, where we converted, where we got our execution right, and we started showing the growth. As quarter three comes in, the Phoenix deal will start ramping up as well. The pipeline in Europe is strong. If we convert some of those pipelines into bookings, I think we should see a positive momentum going forward as well.
Jyoti, you can start.
Hi, I'm Jyoti from Business Line. So Wipro had always had fewer H-1B visas as compared to its peers. So will this help you wean off the program easily?
So on H-1B, if you look at it over a period of time, it's not now, but over the last few years, we have a very focused and purposeful approach on how can we localize. So today, nearly 80% of our U.S. employee base are locals. And we believe that with the change in the H-1B program, from a business impact, will be very limited. We have enough and more avenues to manage the change.
So how will H2 look for you? Will it be better than H1, taking into account the furloughs and the wage hikes?
This is on what context in terms of?
Yeah.
The H1 B visas.
H-2 results.
H-2 results. H-2 results. Okay. Based on visa and wage hikes. Okay. So based on visa? Yeah. Okay. H-1B has no impact on us because we are not dependent on H-1B visas like Saurabh talked about. As far as we are concerned, there's no direct correlation with the wages aspect in terms of H-2. Like I said, quarter three, we had a positive growth. And as far as quarter four is concerned, we see the momentum based on what we saw in quarter three. So I would leave it there.
Can I ask?
Yes, please.
Yeah. I'm Narayanan from United News of India. So I have three questions. I believe that is very much salty questions the way I have put it. The net profit fell 3% despite revenue growth and higher EBITDA. Does this signal operational inefficiency or deeper cost issues? And my second question is large deals grew 90.5% year on year, but overall bookings are just $4.7 billion. Is Wipro overly dependent on a few big deals, and what if they don't convert? And my last question, margins improved only slightly to 16.2%. Can Wipro sustain profitability amid rising competition and client cost pressures, or is this a plateau?
Thanks, Narayan. I like salt and sour too, so it's okay. Okay. So coming to maybe I'll ask Aparna to answer your question number one and three. I will just take a shot at two in terms of the large deals.
First and foremost, I'm happy that we booked $9.5 billion. I'm also happy that we had four mega deals. Having said that, this quarter, those two mega deals are significant renewals. So what that means is that you're going to sustain the client relationship, and that's also an opportunity for you to naturally, organically grow into those clients. Second, if you look at this quarter, the number of large deals were 13. Outside of that, it's all onesies and twosies as well. So I just wanted to give you that math as well. It's not that we're totally dependent only on large deals. It's about account mining. It's about onesies and twosies. It's all about delivery-driven growth and, of course, large deals. That's the icing on the cake. I'm not complaining.
Yeah. So you had a question on the total profit. If you look at our net income, there is a growth of 1.2% on a year-on-year basis. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, there are certain moving parts. Obviously, in terms of our other income and our tax, in tax we had a much lower ETR last quarter, which has now been normalized. So it is not a reflection of operations. Other income, you will note that there is also a large dividend payout that we made. Our investable surplus was down. Our accounting yields have also come down, which impacted other income in line with the interest rate environment. But outside of that, if you had to just go back into operations, if you look at our year-on-year performance, we have expanded our operating margins for IT services by 40 basis points year-on-year.
In this quarter, we have had to take one-off unusual item of where we had to provide for a bad and doubtful debt for one of the insolvencies of our clients, which has impacted and taken it down to 16.7%, not a reflection of our operations. If you look at our data sheet, you will note that our utilization has actually improved. I can tell you that we have made good progress in terms of fixed-price productivity. We have improved our performance operationally. There was also a plus that we got in terms of the rupee depreciation. And therefore, we've been able to hold it at a narrow band despite making a lot of investments for future growth. So we're quite pleased with our margin performance. Our endeavor would be to keep it in a narrow band even as we continue to invest for growth.
We'll just come back to you, sir. I have the third question.
Yeah, the third question on operating margins advance.
Yeah. Okay. We'll just take one question from online. This is from Entrepreneur. And Srini, this one's for you. It's a small break from the questions on numbers. You have completed a little over a year as the leader of Wipro. How do you define your leadership style at a time when AI is changing job roles while keeping Wipro values intact? And what is your broad strategy to swim through the various macro challenges like H-1B visa and discretionary spending?
Thank you for the questions, which are not numbered, so I'd appreciate that. So we recently, last to last week, this quarter, we had last quarter, we had a Spirit of Wipro Run. In fact, this was one of the biggest events where we have our employees do a run as part of Spirit of Wipro Run from Sydney to San Francisco. In fact, we had a significant collection for our social causes as well. And we also sponsored the Bangalore Marathon where 32,000 people participated in that. So net net, Wipro values, and we're going to celebrate 80th year of our existence in December. So I think the values, the spirit of Wipro, integrity, ethics, after 80 years continues to be strong. So the culture and the values of this organization will never change.
We will make sure the AI will also be ethical, responsible, reliable, and secure, just like Wipro. And that's our promise, proof of promise to our customers with the Wipro Intelligence. What was the second part of the question?
The second part was your broad strategy to swim through the various macro challenges.
Be intelligent with Wipro Intelligence.
Rohit, you can go ahead.
Hi, Rohit again from Business World. I wanted to kind of understand the deal wins have been on the higher end of the spectrum.
Rohit, can you just keep the mic closer, please?
So the deal wins have been on the higher end of the spectrum for you guys. Are you able to predict or kind of think about what are the execution risks in the coming quarters, and if you can also talk about the deal ramp-ups that have kind of happened from the deal swap?
So Rohit, I'm surprised that Nisha gave you a second chance to ask the question. Typically, she doesn't. Maybe I'll ask Aparna to add to that. As far as we are concerned, the execution is very critical for all the deals that we have won. So we're going to stay focused on that aspect of it. Any deal that we take up, we got to make sure for the clients it's the right transition, and we start and stay green in that aspect of it as we continue to transform and optimize for our clients. So that's how I would put it to myself and to my entire team at Wipro. And that's where the client centricity comes in. Second thought.
Yeah. Nine of the 13 large deals that we booked are in our top 100 clients. We continue to win in our key clients. We are expanding. There is a substantial portion of renewal in some of these bookings, but there is also an element of new and an opportunity to expand. We are very excited that we are continuing to win in our top 100 clients, which is very, very core to the strategy. And therefore, we are quite pleased. And we right now are in a phase where we are looking at ramping those deals up. Some of these deals, given the nature, will take more than a few quarters to ramp up, right? So you will see that coming through in the next few quarters. And that is the execution that Srini spoke about.
Rohit, do you have another question?
Thank you.
Good. In the spirit of generosity, Ayanti, would you like to ask your - oh, I think you switched it on from the bottom. Yeah.
Can you? Yeah. Just one more for Saurabh. How much of your hiring efforts now are focused on getting AI-skilled workers? And if you could also tell us about what premium are they coming at? And particularly for the freshers that you're hiring, what kind of AI skills are you looking at?
So, two or three parts. One is it's not that this is a skill that is available in abundance. So, there's a lot of focus in organically building the skill in the organization. And if you look at it across the organization, across levels, level one, level two, level three certification for people to get understanding in their own respective domains along with our partners and hyperscalers. So, a lot of effort is being put across that, including leadership. So, everybody is going through that. Second is for the freshers, a lot of focus is train and hire. So, we are spending time much before they come on board in terms in the campuses, work with their curriculum, give the inputs and trainings, assess them, and then onboard them.
So we have tried to change from hire and train to train and hire so that helps us to speed up in terms of deployment on projects. So that's the approach which we are looking at it. But it's a muscle which we'll have to build as we move along over a period of time. And this is a huge skill, and we'll have to just get across everywhere. There is a premium. There are some data architects. There are people with data and knowledge. Obviously, this is scarce. And like anything, whatever is scarce, there is a premium to it. So is the premium here as well.
Right. Can we take one last question from Ayanti?
Srini, just about this time, with a lot of your peers looking at public sector deals, is that something that you will be focusing as well going forward? What does it look like for Wipro?
The question is from Aishwarya.
Okay. Hi, Aishwarya. So as far as we are concerned, we have a strategic roadmap in terms of where we want to play, both in terms of markets and in terms of sectors. If you remember, we call out five sectors, and that's where we are staying focused on. Having said that, right, we also have a future-backed strategy because markets keep changing and the industries keep changing. So for example, if you look at Asia Pacific, it seems to be a growth area for us. And we invested at the right time. And that's what I talked about, APMEA, where the growth came from India, Southeast Asia, right, and Australia. So our strategy is look where the markets are and where we can execute well and then go after that.
The specific question, I may not be able to answer right now, but when we have a good view of that, I will answer it if that's okay with you.
Right. We will have to conclude our Q2 FY26 earnings press conference. For all the follow-up questions, please reach out to Media Relations team, and we will be happy to help you. Thank you, and we'll see you next month.