Q3 in line with expectations; Q4 should be better: NIIT Tech

NIIT Technologies' third quarter revenues of the current fiscal year remained almost flat quarter-on-quarter at Rs 693 crore and a dollar revenue of USD 102 million. Arvind Thakur, the CEO and Joint MD of NIIT Technologies, says Q3 is a small quarter for the industry and the numbers are in line with expectations.He says the company should report better numbers in Q4 of FY17. NIIT Tech has started maintaining an intake of new businesses of over USD 100 million.Thakur says the company has witnessed an expansion in margins every quarter and is confident of reaching an exit margin of 17.5 percent by end of current fiscal.He is more concerned about the falling sterling pound and euro than the US dollar. Below is the verbatim transcript of Arvind Thakur’s interview to Anuj Singhal and Sonia Shenoy on CNBC-TV18. Anuj: The numbers are in-line with the market estimates but we haven’t seen too much of growth. Do you get a sense that you will be posting these kind of numbers in this environment and the analysts will have to adjust their numbers accordingly? A: As you are aware that this is a small quarter for the industry as a whole. So, these numbers are actually in-line with our expectations and I would not call it surprising at all. Obviously going forward, we would expect healthier numbers in the next quarter. Sonia: Last time we spoke with you, you had cautioned us about some spending cuts especially by a few clients. Will that still continue even in Q4 and Q1 of next year or do you think that issue is behind us? A: I think the client has bottomed out and in fact part of the reason why we have not seen strong growth this quarter is because of those cuts we have experienced in this particular quarter.