While Infosys is giving Reliance Industries tough competition for the #1 slot
on overall industry rankings, Wipro has been consistent in both quality and
quantity of exposure
|
Information technology continued its saga as the second most visible industry
in the English and Hindi Press, accounting for 14% of all corporate news during
the seven-month period from October 2001 till April 2002. And while technology
companies, including VSNL, continued to dominate the Cirrus Top 10 list, the
three IT companies–Infosys, Wipro and Microsoft–continued to retain their
place in the space at #2, #3 and #9 respectively. Jointly the three notched up
48247 CIP or 33% of the overall CIPs scored by the top 10 players. In fact,
Infosys at #2 slot has been running pretty close to RIL and is just 169 point
behind it in the overall race for the overall top slot within India Inc.
Overall, April 2002 proved to be a great month for Infosys Technologies. The
company strongly moved ahead, grabbed 5224 Cirrus image points (CIPs) to
strengthen its grip on the #1 position and making it even harder for anyone to
usurp this preferred slot. April was a great month for yet another company. For
the first time in seven months, NIIT moved full steam ahead, consolidating its
position during the previous month to enter the top five circuit with 1820 CIP
during April.
|
|
Interestingly, while Infosys continued to top the Cirrus Index, most of the
players except NIIT lost some shine. The Cirrus Index is a relative index where
the company with the highest cumulative score is deemed to be 100. All other
companies are indexed to it, thereby giving relative position for each of them.
While Wipro at #2 went down marginally by 0.1 point to score 87.7 on index,
Microsoft lost four points to notch 63.1 points and finish #3.
In terms of sheer growth, the biggest gainer on the Cirrus index was NIIT,
which gained 4.4 points to clock 22.8 during April. However, there was not much
change in terms of ranking with most of the companies holding on to their
respective ranks; HCL Technologies moved up from #11 to #9, while Compaq slipped
from #9 to #10.
|
During this period, the big three–Infosys, Wipro and Microsoft garnered
over 40% of all exposure across the IT sector. The other companies that showed
notable progress in their Cirrus IT Index included SIFY, Sun Microsystems,
Cognizant, Zenith Computers and Mphasis BFL.
Cirrus also has a Quality of Exposure (QE) Index which gauges whether the
nature of the coverage was flattering or not. The month proved to be good for
most of the Cirrus IT Top 10 companies on this front with six companies scoring
higher than the average company QE index of 127 (the average QE Index of the IT
Top Ten). Wipro led the pack on this front with 155 points, followed by Satyam
Computer Services (150), TCS (148) and Infosys (142). Meanwhile, with the HP and
Compaq merger now official, the new HP might just manage to reduce the negative
exposure that has been pinning it to the bottom of the QE Index.
|
Wipro: The rock
If there were an award for consistency of exposure both in terms of quantum
as well as quality of exposure, Wipro would have very little competition. Unlike
Infosys and most other companies that have their phases of bursts and quiet
moments, this company has managed to cruise at a consistent high speed, month
after month. More importantly its quality of exposure Index, apart from being
the highest in the Top 10, just does not seem to fluctuate in any month.
SHUBHENDU PARTH in New Delhi
(For more information on Cirrus, contact: sandeep@agencyfaqs.com
/ srinibalram@agencyfaqs.com)