Mumbai, April 16: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) today declared better-than-expected numbers when net profits for the quarter ended March 31, 2015 came in at Rs 5,906 crore against Rs 5,297 crore a year ago.

While this number came above analyst estimates, it was before a one-time special employee reward of Rs 2,628 crore during the fourth quarter.

Taking into account the employee bonus, the company reported a net profit of Rs 3,858.2 crore, a steep 27 per cent fall from a year ago.

Ahead of the results, many in the Street had expected TCS to report a disappointing performance on account of adverse cross-currency movements and a few other industry verticals going through difficult times.

Analysts had expected India's largest IT services company to report a net profit in the region of Rs 5,200-5,300 crore.

Speaking to reporters today, N. Chandrasekaran, CEO and managing director of TCS, said while the company was confronted with headwinds such as difficult conditions in the energy sector (due to lower oil prices) and volatility in the telecom sector, both the client addition and deal wins were strong during the quarter.

TCS pointed out that adverse cross-currency had a negative impact of around 270 basis points on its revenues. Dollar revenues of India's largest IT services company during the period declined to $3.90 billion from $3.93 billion in the preceding quarter, though it was above $3.50 billion in the same quarter of the previous year.

Analysts here said the dollar revenues were in line with their estimates. Further, operating margins for the quarter came in at 27.2 per cent, higher than 26.9 per cent during the preceding three months.

The company added that the quarter saw a strong growth in verticals such as BFSI, retail and manufacturing, while geographies such as Europe and the UK recorded good performance.

Chandrasekaran was, however, optimistic about the prospects for the current fiscal. Though TCS does not give a revenue guidance for the year, he observed that it will be able to overcome Nasscom's dollar revenue growth (for the industry) projection of 12-14 per cent during this year.

One-time reward

TCS will pay employees a special reward or one-time bonus to mark the tenth anniversary of its initial public offering in 2004.

Globally, all employees who have completed at least one year of service will be eligible for the special bonus payment.

Each employee will be given a reward equivalent to one week's salary for every year of service completed at TCS.

TCS disclosed that the total consideration for this special reward will be Rs 2,628 crore.

This comes on the top of an average salary hike of 8 per cent (6-10 per cent depending on performance) for its employees here.

For its overseas employees, the average hike stands between 2- per cent and 4 per cent.

The total employee base at the end of the quarter stood at 319,656. However, attrition during the quarter grew to 14.9 per cent.