EMERGING MARKET INVESTOR: COMPANY TO WATCH: INFOSYS TECHNOLOGIES / INDIA
By Gordon Platt
Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies, the second largest company by market capitalization on the Bombay Stock Exchange, announced one of the first mobile-banking solutions that offers financial-management and advisory services. Finacle Mobile Banking 2.0 supports more than 8,000 types of handsets, including such smart devices as iPhone, BlackBerry and iPad. The solution enables retail and corporate consumers to access banking services and facilitates interactive financial management.
In addition to proximity payments and ATM- or branch-locating through global positioning satellite (GPS), it offers mobile ticketing and top-up services.
Infosys, one of the largest information technology companies based in India, has offices in 33 countries and annual revenue of about $5.4 billion. In its second fiscal quarter, ended September 30, 2010, revenue was up 29.6% from the same period a year earlier.
Infosys, which is highly rated by the Asian Corporate Governance Association, turns a large proportion of its revenue into free cash flow. The company gets approximately 67% of its revenue from North America and about 20% from Europe. Its American depositary shares are traded on Nasdaq.
Infosys has about 13,000 employees based in the US, the vast majority of whom are on H1-B or L-1 visas. In the event of protectionist US actions, the company is considering increasing local hiring or purchasing a US-based company.
The company expects revenue of about $6 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2011.
