IT cos will struggle to deliver 5-10% rev growth for 2009

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Here is a verbatim transcript of Udayan Mukherjee's comments on CNBC-TV18. Also see the accompanying video.

Partly the Gartner report which probably suggested to the market that there was a 10% growth still possible for 2009. I think it was a little bit to do with the rupee as well because people know that there is a lot of pain ahead in terms of revenue growth for 2009. However if the rupee is going to be at 50 a dollar as it is right now or close to that and does not appreciate as people had expected earlier, then maybe some of the pressure might be alleviated by the currency, the pain which is coming through the revenue front.

I think in part Gartner's 10%, in part the rupee's weakness might have both contributed. But you would do well to be extremely wary about this space now. In the near-term, there are still five-six weeks before Infosys speaks for 2009 - in the interim there could be rallies, there could be sell offs. But I think once Infosys speaks you would want to be around that time, you would want to be cautious because from whatever we hear from what is going on in that space, I think IT companies will struggle to deliver even 5-10% kind of revenue growth for 2009.

In that context, some of it might be in the price but all of it may not be. So for durable outperformance in this space, I think it is looking like a bit of a stretch.