L&T Infotech Q4FY21: Net margins to remain around 14%, says CEO Sanjay Jalona

L&T Infotech in Q4FY21 reported healthy EBIT margins, expanding by 320 basis points. Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Sanjay Jalona, MD & CEO of the company said that the net margin will remain at around 14 percent.

“We have always maintained that we will be in the narrow band of 14 percent net margins and that is where we would like to stay. Our focus will be on investing for growth, investing in localisation, and investing in capability building in times to come. We need to invest in the safety of people, who have to invest in capability, we need to make sure that we support our customers in the most difficult times of transformation that they are going through. That is why we are confident of being a growth company with a stable margin at 14 percent,” he told CNBC-TV18.

He also said that the company has given FY21 wage hikes in January and has advanced the FY22 wage hike cycle to April from July.

Jalona also said that the war for talent and attrition is going up.

“We have more demand than the supply. Not giving a salary hike in July 2020 we had to catch up on January 1 with a hike. Now with April 1, we had to prepone it because we see there is a war for talent. We have hired more people than we have ever in the last 3 months in the history of LTI. There is attrition going up as well for the industry and we need to be competitive, we need to be there to participate and make sure we take the employees along in this journey of growth,” he said.

He said that the energy sector has been underperforming given the shift to renewable energy. He also believes that the ability for insurance companies to spend on discretionary has come down.