CLSA upgrades TCS, two other IT majors, despite conservative outlook

CLSA India has upgraded its rating on a few frontline information technology stocks and even raised price targets for a few of them, even though it expects most of the companies to offer a conservative outlook amid an uncertain global environment.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and HCLTech have been upgraded to “underperform” from “sell”. For TCS, the price target has been increased to Rs 4,043 from Rs 3,925, and for HCLTech, it has been raised marginally to Rs 1,553 from Rs 1,536.

Tech Mahindra has been upgraded to “buy” from “outperform” but the price target has been reduced marginally to Rs 1,508 from Rs 1,518.

CLSA has retained “sell” rating on both Wipro and LTIMindtree shares. While Wipro’s price target has been hiked to Rs 445 from Rs 441, that of LTIMindtree stands reduced to Rs 4,252 from Rs 5,281.

CLSA has also retained “outperform” rating on Infosys but cut the price target to Rs 1,706 from Rs 1,741.

While the overall outlook for the sector remains bleak, CLSA expects TCS to report industry-leading constant currency revenue growth sequentially in the March quarter.It expects Infosys to start seeing recovery in earnings from the first quarter of FY25 on expectations of large deal ramp-ups.As far as the key verticals for the IT sector are concerned, the brokerage firm does not see any significant change in the outlook for the BFSI, hi-tech, retail, and telecom segments.

Infosys shares were trading 0.1% up at Rs 1,484.50 on the National Stock Exchange, and that of TCS were trading nearly 2% higher at Rs 3,949.70. Wipro shares were 0.5% up at Rs 483.45, and HCLTech shares rose 0.6% at Rs 1,538.10.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)