HCLTech Q2 Profit Climbs 21% to Rs 5,132 Cr; Revenue Rises 11% to Rs 35,620 Cr

New Delhi: IT firm HCLTech on Monday reported a 21.18 per cent rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 5,132 crore for the July-September quarter of FY27, helped by higher margins from its fast-growing advanced AI operations and a lower tax outgo.

The Noida-headquartered company narrowed its revenue growth forecast for FY27 to 2.5-4 per cent in constant currency from 1-4 per cent earlier.

Its CEO and MD C Vijayakumar said the guidance was backed by strong bookings, a healthy deal pipeline, and momentum in AI-led services.

The company had posted a net profit (attributable to owners of the company) of Rs 4,235 crore in the year-ago period, according to a regulatory filing.

HCLTech’s revenue from operations rose 11.5 per cent to Rs 35,620 crore from Rs 31,942 crore in Q2 FY26.

Its services business, which accounts for about 90 per cent of revenue, grew 4 per cent year-on-year in constant currency, with broad-based growth across verticals and geographies. Revenue from HCLSoftware declined 11.2 per cent, which Vijayakumar said weighed on overall growth.

In rupee terms, revenue from IT and business services rose to Rs 26,938 crore from Rs 23,693 crore a year ago. Engineering and R&D services revenue increased to Rs 5,973 crore from Rs 5,423 crore.

Its revenue from HCL Software declined to Rs 2,709 crore from Rs 2,826 crore.

Sequentially, profit and revenue climbed 11 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively.

“We delivered a strong quarter with new bookings of USD 3.3 billion, up 27 per cent YoY, taking first half bookings to a record high…Advanced AI revenue grew 28.4 per cent QoQ and 78.0 per cent YoY in constant currency. Our AI propositions are resonating well with our clients, giving us confidence in our growth trajectory,” Vijayakumar said.

The company stayed cautious about raising the guidance, he added.

“Even though we saw good demand building up towards the end of the past quarter, we have been a little cautious because in the last maybe two years, the environment has been very volatile.

“Just because we see some good prognosis in the last few weeks, we didn’t want to extrapolate it. We just want to be cautious,” he said during the earnings call.

Revenue from advanced AI, the company’s new set of offerings covering services such as AI factory, physical AI, AI advisory, and agentic AI, rose 78 per cent year-on-year in constant currency to USD 219 million. That puts the business at an annual run rate of USD 876 million.

EBIT margin improved to 18.2 per cent from 16.9 per cent in the previous quarter. Vijayakumar attributed this to higher-margin advanced AI revenue and efficiencies from the company’s internal use of AI, including its AIForce platform.

Tax expense fell to Rs 1,335 crore in Q2 FY27 from Rs 1,466 crore a year ago.

The company said that this was mainly due to benefits from capital assets acquired through business combinations, the resolution of certain tax disputes with authorities and its move to the new tax regime.

The services business added more than USD 100 million in incremental revenue during the quarter, about half from advanced AI and half from core services, Vijayakumar said, noting that HCLTech was offsetting AI-led price deflation in its existing business.

“We are able to very effectively offset the AI-related deflation and grow our market share in existing services. And in addition to that, our new offerings in advanced AI are helping us capture a share of the ever-growing spend in the tech ecosystem. This quarter’s template is what we aspire to repeat in the future.

“We offset the AI-related deflation effectively, grow wallet share and market share in the core services, and add a top-up to all of that by delivering strong growth in the advanced AI services,” he said.

New deal bookings stood at USD 3,258 million, the second-highest in the company’s history. Vijayakumar said AI was a central theme in every large deal won during the quarter.

Among verticals, retail and consumer goods grew 14 per cent and financial services 7.1 per cent year-on-year in constant currency. By geography, India grew 21.8 per cent and the US 3.5 per cent, while Europe declined 0.3 per cent.

HCLTech’s headcount rose by 6,450 during the quarter to 2,30,339, reversing a decline of 3,292 in the April-June period. The company added 6,136 freshers, and attrition stood at 12.8 per cent.

Ram Sundararajan, the company’s chief people officer, said annual pay hikes would take effect from October, following the same pattern as last year. The company expects to hire about 10,000 freshers in FY27.

On the US government’s suspension of the Permanent Labour Certification (PERM) programme for several Indian IT firms, including HCLTech, he said the company had filed very few such applications in recent years and did not expect any material impact on its workforce plans or client engagements.

The board declared an interim dividend of Rs 12 per share, with October 16 as the record date.

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