Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) recorded a 12.3 per cent growth in net profits for the quarter ended December 31, 2021 that was a tad lower than the lofty expectations of some analysts.

The company announced a Rs 18,000-crore share buyback and a dividend of Rs 7 per share.

The commentary from the top management was one of optimism as the growth traction is expected to continue with companies spending more on digital transformation initiatives .

TCS posted a net profit of Rs 9,769 crore against Rs 8,701 crore in the same quarter of the previous year. Brokerages such as Emkay were expecting the company to report a net profit of Rs 9,951 crore.

Revenues jumped to Rs 48,885 crore from Rs 42,015 crore in the year ago quarter — a rise of 16.3 per cent. In dollar terms, the topline showed a growth of 14.4 per cent to $6,524 million. The total contract value (TCV) inched up to $7.6 billion against $6.8 billion a year ago.

At its board meeting on Wednesday, the directors approved a share buyback of Rs 18,000 crore. The re-purchase is the largest in value terms compared with the previous three programmes (Rs 16,000 crore each).

It will see the IT services giant buying four crore shares at Rs 4,500 per share. This marks a premium of 16.66 per cent to its closing price of Rs 3,857.25 on the BSE on Wednesday. The price is largely in line with expectations of the market and it constitutes 1.8 per cent of its total paid-up equity share capital.

“The quantum of buyback is much more than we expected and the buyback rate at Rs 4,500 works out to a premium of 16.67 per cent over the last traded price of the stock, which is far above the Street’s expectations,” said Prashanth Tapse, vice-president (Research) at Mehta Equities Ltd.