New Delhi, Jan 12 (PTI) IT services firm HCLTech on Monday reported an 11.2 per cent decline in consolidated net profit to Rs 4,076 crore in the October-December quarter of FY26, hit by a one-time provision
of USD 82 million (Rs 719 crore) for the implementation of new labour codes.
The Noida-headquartered firm had registered a net profit (attributable to owners of the company) of Rs 4,591 crore in the year-ago period.
Excluding the one-time labour code impact, the company noted that net profit would have stood higher at Rs 4,795 crore.
According to regulatory filings, the impact of the new labour codes on earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) was USD 109 million (Rs 956 crore).
HCLTech Chief People Officer Ram Sundararajan stated that the company has now factored all necessary provisions into the current quarter’s pay changes and does not anticipate further substantial incremental costs related to the new rules.
HCLTech’s revenue from operations grew 13.3 per cent to Rs 33,872 crore compared to Rs 29,890 crore in Q3 FY25. This growth was bolstered by a 19.9 per cent sequential surge in Advanced AI revenue at USD 146 million, alongside a 10.8 per cent year-on-year increase in its Engineering and R&D services.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, its profit declined 3.7 per cent, while revenue increased 6 per cent.
“The performance is underpinned by our AI vision and offerings…we seek continued momentum in AI-powered solutions like physical AI, which is robotics, AI factory, custom silicon engineering for edge inferencing chips, as well as large-scale transformation programmes in application development and modernisation services.
“We delivered USD 3.79 billion of revenue this quarter, which helped us cross a very important milestone of annualised revenue of USD 15 billion,” HCLTech CEO and MD C Vijayakumar said during the company’s earnings call.
HCLTech narrowed its FY26 revenue growth guidance to a range of 4 to 4.5 per cent in constant currency terms, from the 3 per cent to 5 per cent projected earlier.
The company clocked USD 3 billion in net new bookings this quarter, up 43.5 per cent from the year-ago period.
It also secured a mega USD 473 million deal with a global apparel retailer to serve as its long-term AI-led technology partner.
HCLTech also announced that it has entered into a multi-year partnership to design, build and manage a future-ready IT infrastructure for The Magnum Ice Cream Company (TMICC).
In the coming years, HCLTech will deploy its AI Force platform to embed AI across TMICC’s digital infrastructure.
HCLSoftware revenue grew by 28.1 per cent quarter-on-quarter and 3.1 per cent year-on-year in constant currency, driven by seasonality and the data intelligence portfolio.
HCLTech added 2,852 freshers during the quarter, bringing total year-to-date fresher additions to over 10,000, surpassing the previous fiscal year’s hiring numbers. The management noted that fresher hiring for this fiscal year will be significantly higher than last year and will continue into Q4.
The company highlighted its “elite engineer” hiring strategy, where top technical talent is being recruited at salaries of Rs 18 lakh to Rs 22 lakh per annum, roughly 3-4x the standard entry-level rate. About 15 per cent of the company’s new onboardings are now being classified as elite engineers.
The company’s total employee count at the end of Q3 FY26 stood at 226,379, a drop of 261 employees from the previous quarter.
Despite a one-time financial hit of USD 109 million due to obligations under the new labour code, HCLTech stated that this would have no impact on its hiring plans.
HCLTech’s board has declared an interim dividend of Rs 12 per equity share of Rs 2 face value for FY 2025-26, with the record date fixed as January 16, 2026, and payment on January 27, 2026.
Shares of HCLTech settled at Rs 1,668.10 apiece on the BSE on Monday, 0.35 per cent higher than the previous close.
The financial results were announced after market hours. PTI ANK ANK BAL BAL
