The bourses reacted favourably to the results. The CMC scrip went up by Rs 9 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) from its previous close to end the day at Rs 247.50 with 29,000 shares changing hands. It also touched an intra-settlement circuit on the exchange by gaining 25 per cent from Monday to touch Rs 249.10.

Income from operations during the period went up by 28.19 per cent to Rs 287.24 crore from Rs 224.07 crore. Gross profit increased by 34.63 per cent to Rs 17.86 crore from Rs 13.26 crore. Earnings per share more than doubled from Rs 1.7 to Rs 4.2. "The performance of CMC during the year has been significant not only owing to the growth in sales and profits, but also because we havebeen able to bag some of the more prestigious projects in the information-technology (IT) industry against stiff domestic and international competition," said chairman and managing director (CMD) Ramesh P Jhunjhunwala in a release issued here on Friday. According to the company, it has set itself a target to achieve a turnover of Rs 750 crore by 2002.

Total expenditure during the period went up by 29.73 per cent to Rs 272.55 crore from Rs 210.08 crore. The interest burden, however, has come down from Rs 5.29 crore to Rs 4.12 crore.

During the year, CMC set up an ERP development centre in Calcutta in collaboration with Baan of Netherlands. The company is also in the process of setting up a competency centre for Java in Hyderabad to train and create a pool of expertise in the technology.

CMC also developed the CDAS software for the depositary being set up by the BSE. It also implemented its trading software at the Chittagong Stock Exchange in Bangladesh. The company also sold its fingerprint analysis andcriminal tracing software to the police in Mauritius, Tamil Nadu and Jammu & Kashmir.