HCL Tech stock jumps 4.5% post-Verizon deal; Morgan Stanley remains overweight

HCL Tech share price: Shares of HCL Technologies rallied as much as 4.59 per cent to Rs 1186.70 apiece on the BSE in the opening deals on Friday, a day after the company announced a technology deal with Verizon, a leading telecom company in the US. 

The stock eventually ended at Rs 1,171.35, up 3.24 per cent on the BSE.

"Verizon Business today announced a strategic global partnership making HCLTech its primary Managed Network Services (MNS) collaborator in all networking deployments for global enterprise customers, bringing together two global leaders in enterprise networking. The partnership combines Verizon’s networking power, solutions, and scale with HCLTech’s market-leading Managed Service capabilities to usher in a new era of large-scale wireline service delivery for enterprise customers," the companies said in a joint press release. 

Verizon Business will continue to lead all customer acquisition, sales, solutions, and overall planning and development with its customers. HCLTech will lead the post-sale implementation and ongoing support. To execute the tightly coordinated balance of responsibilities at the enterprise scale, a select group of Verizon Business Global Customer Operations staff will transition to HCLTech, the release added. 

Morgan Stanley overweight on stock

Post-Verizon deal, global brokerage Morgan Stanley has maintained an overweight rating on the stock with a target price of Rs 1,200. The brokerage said it believes "such deal announcements provide greater comfort and should lower perceived risk of potential revenue guidance cut at the lower end."

It added that with the current deal announcement, it expects some of the stock's underperformance to reverse.

HCL Tech Q4 Results

HCL Technologies, the Noida-headquartered IT services company, reported on July 12 a consolidated net profit of Rs 3,534 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2023 (Q1 FY24). The company had posted a profit of Rs 3,983 crore in the previous quarter and Rs 3,283 crore in the year-ago period. On a sequential basis, the profit slipped by 11.2 per cent while on a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the figure grew by 7.6 per cent. Revenue from operations came in at Rs 26,296 crore, up 12 per cent YoY but down 1.16 per cent on a QoQ basis.

Both bottom-line and top-line figures missed Zee Business analysts' estimates. READ MORE

HCLTech maintained its full-year revenue growth view of 6%-8% on a constant currency basis.