SSI was punished by the market on Friday, as its dwindling computer education business barely managed to stay in the black in Q2.

The scrip of the computer training company dropped 3% to Rs 87 on BSE no sooner the results hit the market around mid-morning today. Around 83,000 SSI shares were traded on the counter on BSE in the first half of trading on Friday.

The stock has been depressed on the bourses as the IT trading industry is passing through tough times. The scrip currently trades close to its 52-week low of Rs 81.

For Q2 ended 31 December 2002, SSI posted a sharp fall in Q3 net profit to Rs 0.15 crore compared to Rs 1.73 crore in the quarter ended 31 December 2001. Total income slumped 13% from Rs 68.45 crore in Q2 ended 31 December 2001 to Rs 59.39 crore in Q2 ended 31 December 2002.

Burgeoning interest costs have impacted Q2 net profit. Interest costs have gone up from Rs 0.07 crore to Rs 2.18 crore. Other income declined sharply by 62.7% to Rs 0.88 crore from Rs 2.37 crore.

SSI is mainly focused on providing high-end training in courses related to emerging technologies such as networking, e-business and client-server technologies. It recently launched training programmes in bioinformatics as that is emerging as a major thrust area in the global scientific scenario.

SSI is also into IT consulting and solutions, besides IT education. Its domains in the IT sector are enterprise applications, ERP, CRM, supply chain management and data warehousing. SSI focuses on financial services, banking, insurance, government services, retail, automotive and high technology.

SSI and Nasdaq Global Holdings are partners in IndigoMarkets, a provider of stock exchange solutions

BSE Code: 517554