Wipro’s Deal Wins Jump as Margin Falls to Lowest Since 2023

Wipro’s core IT services revenue slipped 1.4% to $2,614.5 million in the June quarter, and operating margin fell 130 basis points to 16%, a level last seen in December 2023. The Bengaluru-based IT major still landed $3.37 billion in fresh bookings, including $1.6 billion of large contracts, its best deal quarter in a year.

Buried in the same filing is a smaller number that didn’t make many headlines: Wipro’s trailing 12-month revenue grew year over year for the first time in 11 quarters. It’s a sign the long slide in the company’s core business may be turning, even as this quarter’s profit shows exactly what that turn is costing.

Revenue Misses Estimates as Margin Hits a 2023 Low

India’s fourth-largest software exporter posted consolidated net profit of ₹3,352 crore (roughly $357 million) for the quarter ended June 30, up 0.6% from ₹3,330 crore a year earlier but down about 4.3% from ₹3,500 crore in the March quarter. Consolidated revenue rose 10.6% year over year to ₹24,478.6 crore, but that missed the average Reuters-LSEG estimate of ₹24,776 crore.

Brokerages had braced for softness. Yes Securities had modeled margin easing to 16.4%; Mirae Asset Sharekhan projected revenue near ₹24,947 crore. Wipro’s actual 16% margin and ₹24,478.6 crore revenue landed below both.

The table shows a business growing in rupee terms while shrinking in dollar terms. Wipro’s own 17.3% margin booked three months earlier depended partly on a weaker rupee flattering results priced in dollars and converted back home; the September-quarter outlook assumes the rupee near 94.5 to the dollar, versus 92.35 for the quarter just gone.

Srini Pallia, Wipro’s chief executive and managing director, told reporters on the post-results call that the broader demand environment hadn’t changed much from the previous quarter. Large banking, financial services and insurance clients in the United States and Europe are still holding technology budgets tight. The board also approved an interim dividend of ₹2 a share, payable to shareholders on record as of July 27.

The miss lands in the middle of a bruising Indian earnings season. A rival insurer’s 15% single-session stock slide over Q1 numbers landed the same week, a reminder that Wipro isn’t the only large-cap getting punished for cautious guidance right now.

A Quiet Reversal After 11 Quarters

Here’s the number most coverage skipped. Wipro’s trailing 12-month revenue came in $32 million above the year-ago trailing 12-month figure, the first positive year-on-year swing in that metric in 11 quarters, according to an analysis from the Economic Times’ ET Intelligence Group. The annual revenue decline has also been shrinking: down just 0.3% in FY26, against a 3.2% drop in FY24.

Trailing 12-month revenue simply adds up the last four quarters and compares that sum with the four quarters before it, smoothing out single-quarter noise. By that measure, Wipro has been shrinking on a rolling basis since roughly 2023. This quarter is the first time in nearly three years that comparison flipped positive.

A year ago, in the same June quarter, Wipro logged $4.97 billion in total contract bookings, a spike that took months to convert into billed revenue. That lag between signing and delivery is exactly what has kept the top line flat for so long, and it’s the same lag now weighing on this quarter’s margin.

Management says execution has picked up on some of the larger deals signed earlier this year. Whether that ramp-up speed holds will decide if the positive trailing-revenue swing becomes a trend or a one-quarter blip.

Wage Hikes and Slow Ramp-Ups Are Eating the Margin

Wipro’s own explanation for the margin drop points to three overlapping pressures rather than one.

• Wage increases – the annual hike cycle landed in full this quarter, lifting the cost base across delivery teams.
• Slower project ramp-ups – clients signed contracts but took longer than usual to move from signature to billed delivery.
• Continued AI investment – spending on AI platforms and new large engagements ran ahead of the revenue those deals will eventually generate.

Voluntary attrition ticked up slightly to 13.9% on a trailing 12-month basis, from 13.8% three months earlier, a small sign of renewed pressure to retain staff. Margin has swung in a tight band over the past year, from 16.7% in the September 2025 quarter to a 17.6% high in the December 2025 quarter, before this quarter’s sharper drop to 16%.

“As we navigate an evolving technology landscape, we remain focused on investing in our people and strategic priority areas,” Aparna Iyer, Wipro’s chief financial officer, said, adding that the investments could bring near-term margin swings but should support growth further out.

Wipro Skips the Data Center Bet TCS and HCLTech Made

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and HCL Technologies (HCLTech), Wipro’s two biggest domestic rivals, have each put capital behind building their own AI data center capacity. Wipro hasn’t. Instead, according to the ET Intelligence Group’s analysis, it designs and deploys AI solutions for clients through outside partnerships rather than owning the underlying infrastructure.

The company frames this as a pivot toward a services-as-a-software model built around its AI Native Business and Platforms unit. The approach avoids the debt load that typically funds capex-heavy data center builds.

Clients are moving beyond technology modernisation to AI-enabled operating models that improve quality, resilience, and productivity. Wipro’s consulting-led, AI-powered approach helps clients embed AI at the core of their business, and these engagements reflect both the breadth of our capabilities and the trust clients place in us as a transformation partner.

Pallia said that in Wipro’s official results statement. The tradeoff is straightforward: a lighter balance sheet now, against a strategy investors can only judge over several quarters of deal conversion, not one.

Mutual Funds Slash Their Wipro Holdings

Wipro shares actually rose 1.75% to close at ₹177.8 on the BSE the day before results landed, and the stock held that gain after the numbers came out. The longer trend tells a rougher story.

• 13.4 times earnings: Wipro trades at a trailing price-to-earnings multiple of 13.4, against a 10-year average above 18.
• Down 33.5% this year: the stock has lost about a third of its value in 2026, more than double the Nifty IT index’s 24.8% decline.
• Mutual funds cut to 1.80%: domestic mutual fund holdings in Wipro fell from 4.31% the previous quarter.
• Down 15% since April 16: shares have slid since Wipro’s March-quarter results, even counting Thursday’s pre-results bounce.

Promoter holding, by contrast, barely moved, slipping to 72.59% from 72.66% a year earlier. It’s institutional money, not the founding group, that has been stepping back.

The broader market has had its own reaction to this earnings season. Indian benchmarks recently saw a 700-point Sensex rally tied to IT earnings elsewhere, even as Wipro’s own numbers underwhelmed. A revival in Wipro’s valuation depends on how quickly its revenue and profitability actually improve, not on sentiment across the sector.

What Is Wipro’s Guidance for the September Quarter?

Wipro expects IT services revenue between $2,574 million and $2,627 million for the September quarter, a sequential range of minus 1.5% to plus 0.5% in constant currency. That’s a touch more cautious than a year ago, when the company guided the same quarter to a range of minus 1% to plus 1%.

The narrower, softer band signals management still isn’t ready to call an inflection, even with bookings running hot. A year-ago guidance range of minus 1% to plus 1% for the same quarter shows just how little the company’s confidence has shifted since then.

Investors will be watching two things converge over the next couple of quarters: whether the newly signed large deals ramp up fast enough to lift revenue, and whether margin stabilizes once the wage-hike cycle fully cycles through. Management says the effectiveness of its AI partnership strategy, not capex, is what will answer that question.

If Wipro keeps to its usual reporting rhythm of announcing results on the 16th of the month, the next scorecard lands in mid-October, when the market finds out whether this quarter’s deal wins finally show up in the top line.