Indian IT companies are unusual: they guide, in public, every quarter. That makes their earnings calls a free education in how managements communicate — and how markets react to the gap between words and numbers.
The decoder ring
'Furloughs' means clients paused work to save money. 'Deal ramp-downs' means existing contracts are shrinking. 'Strong deal pipeline' with weak revenue growth means deals are being signed but not started — clients are committing to spend later, not now. 'Cost optimisation deals' means clients are spending to spend less, which is real revenue but at lower margins.
The pattern to study
Track guidance at the start of a fiscal year versus the actual result, for five years, for any large IT company. You will find managements are systematically optimistic at the start of good years and systematically conservative coming out of bad ones. That bias is tradeable information about the cycle — not about the next quarter.