Mumbai, April 19: Wipro today forecast a disappointing sales outlook for the first quarter of the current fiscal, reinforcing the mixed fortunes of India’s top IT services companies.

Bangalore-based Wipro, which declared its fourth quarter numbers today, projected revenues from IT services to be in the range of $1.575-1.610 billion, a decline of 0.6 per cent at the lower end of the band to a rise of 1.6 per cent (at the upper end) over the preceding quarter.

Analysts had expected the company to forecast a rise in revenues in the range of 1-4 per cent.

T.K. Kurien, executive director and chief executive officer of the company’s IT business, defended the guidance, stating that the first quarter was generally the “worst” for the company as in India, business revenues decline during this period and peak in the last three months of the financial year.

He said in the first quarter of the last fiscal, the company’s revenues had declined by 1.4 per cent.

This projection by Wipro comes after both Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and HCL Technologies made optimistic forecasts (though they do not give out precise numbers) for the first quarter of this year.

After declaring its quarterly numbers on Wednesday, the senior management at TCS had pointed out that the current year would be better than last year as the deal pipeline was improving.

Similarly, Anant Gupta, president & CEO at HCL Technologies, had said that with more deals on the anvil, the first two quarters of this year would be better.

These promising forecasts had come after Infosys projected that revenues in this year would grow 6-12 per cent, sharply lower than the growth estimate of 12-14 per cent made by industry association Nasscom.

Wipro’s net profit rose 17 per cent for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2013 to Rs 1,728.7 crore from Rs 1,480.9 crore in the same period last year.

The consolidated total income of the company rose 13 per cent to Rs 9,613.1 crore for the January-March quarter against Rs 8,506.1 crore in the same period of 2011-12. Its IT services revenues rose 13 per cent to Rs 8,554 crore ($1.57 billion) in the fourth quarter.

Commenting on the fourth quarter results, Wipro CFO Suresh Senapaty said, “The cross currencies have been volatile and impacted our financial performance in the quarter. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange, we have been able to maintain margins on a sequential basis.”

Operating margins during the fourth quarter stood at 20.2 per cent compared with 20.8 per cent in the preceding three months.

Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro, said the company had completed the demerger of the non-IT business effective March 31, to make it a pure play IT company.

“We are confident that being a technology focused company will provide a fresh momentum for growth,” he added.

Analysts said that though the numbers were disappointing, the company would gain in the long run because of various initiatives it had taken.

“Wipro’s results were below estimates. The management has made several changes to the structure to align it more with the demand generation process and to increase efficiency.

We believe these initiatives have not yet started showing the expected results and will start reflecting in the financials in due course of time,’’ Dipen Shah, head of private client group research, Kotak Securities said.