Mumbai: Shares of IT companies lost close to 2 percent Thursday after the US-based Cognizant lowered its full year revenue guidance to at least 14 percent, from 16.5 percent earlier, indicating that the sector may face some challenges ahead.
Infosys' scrip ended the day 1.68 percent lower, while TCS was down 1.56 percent on the BSE. Intra-day, they had fallen as much as 2 percent.
Infosys was the worst performer among the 30 blue-chips that make up the BSE index, Sensex, followed by TCS.
Shares of HCL Tech were down 1.58 percent.
Hexaware Tech and Wipro however, managed to end in the green, up 0.60 percent and 0.26 percent respectively.
Led by the fall in key IT scrips, the BSE IT index lost 1.27 percent to end at 9,768.39.
The US and European markets provide more than 85 per cent revenues for Indian IT services firms.
Cognizant, which has a big presence in India, had yesterday reported a healthy 24 percent jump in net profit at USD 371.9 million for the quarter ended June 30, but struck a cautious note as it lowered the full year revenue guidance.
"Due to weakness at certain clients and longer than anticipated sales cycles for certain large integrated deals, we are adopting a more conservative stance for the remainder of the year and revising our 2014 revenue guidance to growth of at least 14 percent over the prior year," Cognizant CEO Francisco D'Souza had said.
The New Jersey-based firm also expanded its stock repurchase programme by USD 500 million to USD 2 billion.
In India, it has global delivery centres in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kerala, Kolkata and Pune.
Overall, the company's revenue for the second quarter of 2014 rose by 16.5 percent to USD 2.52 billion, from USD 2.16 billion a year ago.
