Mumbai, July 18: Technology titan Wipro today forecast a tough quarter ahead with demand forecast to remain weak as customers in the US pare spending.

“We remain cautious in the near term. Looking ahead, for the quarter ending September 2008, we expect revenues from our IT services businesses to be approximately $1.09 billion,” Wipro chairman Azim Premji said.

The company’s revenues in the first quarter ended June 30 rose 43 per cent year-on-year to Rs 5,967 crore. Profit after tax grew 25 per cent year-on-year to Rs 908 crore. IT services revenue in dollar terms totalled $1.07 billion, a sequential growth of 3.5 per cent and a year-on-year rise of 37 per cent.

“Compared with TCS and Infosys, Wipro has delivered better volume growth. However, there seems to be some pain in the near term,” said Harshad Deshpande, an analyst at Ambit Capital.

“Rate realisation and utilisation improved sequentially by 300 basis points and 50 basis points, respectively. We have won seven multi-year multi –million dollar deals and added 31 customers during the quarter,” Suresh Senapaty, CFO of Wipro, said.

Meanwhile, Satyam Computers today forecast revenue for the 12 months ended March 31, 2009 to range between $2.65 billion and $2.69 billion, unchanged from an April projection. “We are yet to see consistent signals from the banking and financial services sector which continue to be fluid,” chairman Ramalinga Raju said. Net income rose 45 per cent to Rs 548 crore in the three months ended June 30.

Market rally

Bank stocks — buoyed by a lower-than-expected inflation number — sparked a 523-point rally in the sensex as worries about tough monetary measures by the Reserve Bank of India receded. With the SBI and ICICI Bank surging today, the BSE sensex closed at 13635.40, up almost 4 per cent.