India's third-largest software services exporter Wipro Ltd has posted a net profit of Rs 214.8 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2003 as compared to Rs 209.0 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2002.

Wipro's quarterly profit rose 4 per cent, in line with expectations.

Total income has increased from Rs 1,004.9 crore in Q2 last year to Rs 1,228.5 crore in the quarter ended September 30, 2003.

However, the infotech firm's profit after tax from continuing operations, computed in accordance with US GAAP for the same quarter, stood at Rs 229 crore.

The difference between profit computed in accordance with Indian GAAP and US GAAP is due to varying revenue recognition standards and accounting for deferred stock compensation expenses.

The company's global IT services and products segment revenues were Rs 1,023 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2003 under US GAAP.

The difference of Rs 4.6 crore is attributable to different revenue recognition standards under India GAAP & US GAAP.

Issuing the company's outlook for the next quarter, Wipro Chairman Azim Premji said: "Strong volume growth and declining pricing pressures resulted in revenues of $222 million in our global IT services business ahead of our guidance of $210 million."

"During the quarter, we saw robust sequential growth across all business segments in our global IT business. Business prospects continue to be promising, with healthy volume growth and prices moving in a narrow band. Looking ahead, for the quarter ending December 2003,we expect revenue from our global IT Services business to be approximately $241 million."

Wipro vice chairman Vivek Paul said: "This quarter we saw customers demonstrating both growing confidence in our end-to-end service model as well as an increased willingness to increase spending."

"Our Technology businesses continued to recover, with sequential growth of 16 per cent, including Telecom, which grew sequentially by 14 per cent. Our IT businesses continued to demonstrate steady growth, with sequential growth of 12 per cent."

"Highlights in IT business were a 36 per cent sequential growth in our technology infrastructure services, 22 per cent sequential growth in BPO and 19 per cent sequential growth in package implementation. account openings for the quarter continued at an encouraging rate with 35 new accounts opened, 6 of which were Fortune 1000 companies."