Infosys turned a $1 billion IT firm on Tuesday and rewarded its shareholders with bonus shares and dividend. If you had invested Rs 95 per share in Infosys in 1993 -- when the software firm went public -- you would have seen the price of your Infosys share touch a whopping Rs 80,000 today.
"We are rewarding our shareholders for the trust they placed in us, when all the financial institutions and banks turned us away," Infosys Chief Financial Officer T V Mohandas Pai said, explaining how the software firm's value had grown over the years.
A nostalgic Infosys founder Chairman and Chief Mentor N R Narayana Murthy, however, recalled that two government agencies -- the Karnataka State Financial Corporation and the Karnataka State Industrial Investment and Development Corporation Ltd -- pitched in with Rs 24 lakh (Rs 2.4 million) in the fledgling venture during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Infosys announced three bonus shares for each share held, besides a total dividend of Rs 115 (2300 per cent on a face value of Rs 5 per share).
Just after Infosys went public, it earned revenues of $10 million and a few years in 1999, became first Indian firm to be listed on the US Nasdaq stock market and came out with a second ADS listing last year.
Infosys has announced five bonus shares and one stock split since its domestic listing and each share in 1994 has become 64 shares now.