NIIT firmed up today after the company said it has teamed up with a US firm to provide  application development and maintenance services.

The scrip of the software services firm was up by 3%  at Rs 125.50 on the BSE in early-afternoon trades. Earlier, in the session, it hit a high of Rs 127.80. A total of 3.2 lakh shares changed hands on the counter by the first one-and-half hours of trading.

The battered NIIT stock has staged a revival  in the last few  sessions on the back of its improved financial performance for Q2 ended March 2003. From a low of Rs 98.40 on 31 March 2003, the stock surged by 37.7% in a few  sessions to a peak of Rs 135.55 on 5 May 2003. Profit-taking saw the scrip pare some of those gains later.

The NIIT stock firmed up today after the company said that it has entered into an agreement with Thrivent Financial for Luthcrans, a Fortune 500 financial services organisation in USA, to provide application development and maintenance services for a select group of existing systems.

The engagement with Thrivent Financial carries an estimated value of US$10 million and shall run for a period of five years.

NIIT has three segments namely - Learning Solutions, Software Services and Systems Integration (SI) and product distribution.

NIIT posted a significantly improved performance for the second quarter ended March 2003, recording a decent 15% rise in sales, improvement in margins and staging a turnaround at the net level with profit after tax (PAT) of Rs 5.4 crore.

This improved performance at the net level was much better than the market expectations of around Rs 2.2 crore PAT for the quarter. Notably, both the software as well as learning businesses recorded growth during the second quarter.

In Q2 ended March 2003, the fresh order intake of NIIT Technologies, the software division of NIIT, was at $40 million, a growth of 6.7% sequentially. This was the seventh consecutive quarter when the order intake has witnessed a sequential growth.

At the time of announcing its Q2 results, the NIIT management indicated that its software services business is going strong and  is on the right track.

As far as IT education business is concerned, NIIT expects its revenues from global IT education business to grow by 10% in the year ending September 2003. NIIT  has  a  range of training products encompassing  IT  and  IT-assisted education,  with  a  bouquet of 11 IT education offerings  branded  as  the 'Winning XI from NIIT'.

In the education division, NIIT made two acquisitions during the second quarter—CognitiveArts and eGurucool. The company feels that these acquisitions substantially enhance the depth and width of its capability in the Corporate Knowledge Solutions business ( through NIIT Technologies) and IT-assisted education space (through NIIT Education). While the CognitiveArts acquisition was to cater to the US market for corporate solutions, eGurucool acquisition was for large curriculum support market.