Mr Sudhakar Ram. CMD

Our Bureau

Mumbai, Jan. 9 Tighter execution of existing contracts coupled with a robust growth in revenues from the US has helped the city based IT solutions firm Mastek Ltd to report a 31 per cent rise in net profit (excluding contributions from the erstwhile Deloitte joint venture) for the quarter ended December 31, 2007.

Mastek reported a net profit of Rs 27.1 crore for the quarter, against Rs 20.64 crore reported during the same year-ago quarter.

If contributions from the erstwhile joint venture are taken into account, the net profit has gone up by around 24 per cent from Rs 21.84 core in the year-ago quarter.

The company’s total income was higher by 17 per cent at Rs 215.9 crore compared with Rs 184.7 crore last year (after excluding contributions from the erstwhile Deloitte joint venture).

Mastek’s revenues rose as the company was able to command a rise of up to 10 per cent in billing rates in the last quarter. “We have also improved productivity in all our fixed price projects whose execution has been managed using fewer people,” the Chairman and Managing Director, Mr Sudhakar Ram, told Business Line.

This was reflected in the employee additions for the December quarter when the company hired less than 100 people compared with 200 employees added in the previous sequential quarter, added Mr Ram.

Revenues from the US increased by about 50 per cent to Rs 53.2 crore, as two new accounts were added in that country, including one from the recently acquired VectorMastek.

“We are clearly not seeing a slowdown in IT spend (in the US) in the insurance space,” added Mr Ram.

For the January-March quarter, the company expects to clock a net profit of Rs 29-30 crore on net revenues of Rs 220-Rs 225 crore.

The Mastek scrip was up by 3.27 per cent, to close at Rs 344 on the BSE today.

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