The main reason for the jump in Infosys was the rise in its ADR which shot up by $ 20.25 to $ 165.25 on Nasdaq of the US on Wednesday. This works out to a prices of Rs 14,393 (Two ADRs are equivalent to on equity share). At the current level, the ADR trades at a whopping premium of 74 per cent to the domestic shares.

Meanwhile, Infosys, the only Indian firm listed on the US Nasdaq exchange, will announce its half year results on Friday. It may also consider an interim dividend. Infosys Technologies Ltd will outperform the industry in the first half of 1999/2000 (April-March) despite a slowdown in second quarter earnings growth, analysts said on Wednesday.

"We expect Infosys to post profitgrowth of 60-65 per cent in the first half," said R Sukumar, fund manager of Kothari Pioneer's Infotech Fund. India's software sector is forecast to show average profit growth of 55-60 percent in the first half of 1999/2000 against the year-earlier period, sector analysts said.

Profits in the first quarter surged 156 per cent year-on-year to Rs 60.61 crore ($13.9 million), largely due to exchange rate fluctuations and interest income. Analysts said the company was unlikely to repeat the performance because currency fluctuations were limited in the second quarter over the same period last year.

"While its earnings are in dollars, a very large part of its expenditure is in rupees," one industry official said. "It's a winning combination all the way."

Infosys will benefit from new value-added orders and redeployment of staff. "Their operating margins are going up and they have got into E-commerce (software) in a big way which is a higher margin business than the others," said Srividya Rajesh, softwareanalyst at Sundaram Newton Asset Management Co Ltd.

She expected E-commerce revenues during the July-September quarter to rise to eight percent of total revenue from 6.4 percent in the quarter ended June 30. A Merrill Lynch report said in September it expected Internet services to be a big driver of Infosys's future growth, accounting for 20-25 per cent of its total revenues by 2001/02.

Infosys has been successful in training and redeploying its engineers quickly from projects that fixed the Y2K bug in computers to Internet and E-commerce related areas. "There has been an increase in manpower, and newer employees are being deployed, bringing in growth," said Rajesh Iyer, analyst at Triumph International Research.