Wipro Ltd, India's third largest IT services exporter, Tuesday reported a jump of 6.7 percent sequentially in its first quarter profits for the financial year 2012-13, aided by the strong demand for outsourcing services and the week Indian rupee.

However, the company gave a muted forecast for the year based on the global slowdown and the company's shares fell to a nine-month low.

Net profit for the first quarter stood at Rs 15.80 billion, compared to Rs 14.81 billion in the previous quarter.

In rupee terms, revenues from IT services, which accounts for 75 percent of its revenues, stood at Rs 83.14 billion, recording a 9.5 percent jump sequentially over Rs 75.90 billion reported in the January-March quarter. However, in dollar terms, the revenues for the period showed a decline of 1.36 percent to $1515 million from the $1536 million in the previous quarter due to the cross currency effect.

The Bangalore-based company promoted by billionaire Azim Premji is also into manufacturing of electrical and electronic products and toiletries. The company gave a weak forecast for the third quarter of its IT service business that includes back office operations, outsourcing and IT-enabled services. The company said it expected revenues for the third quarter to be in the range of $1.52 billion to $1.55 billion, up by 0.3 to 2.3 percent from the June quarter while market expected the company to forecast a revenue increase of 2-4 percent.

Wipro numbers are weak. We expected IT services to grow 0.5 per cent sequentially, but they have reported a decline. Volumes and pricing have declined sequentially. Despite 11 per cent depreciation in the rupee, margins have gone up by only 30 basis points sequentially, Abhishek Shindadkar, IT analyst at ICICI Securities, told NDTV Profit.

Wipro shares dropped 4.4 percent Tuesday morning to Rs 341. Later, the shares recovered some of the losses and were trading at Rs 346.30, down by 2.85 percent at 12.43 pm (local time) on the National Stock Exchange.

Manufacturing Icici Wipro Outsourcing