Fourth quarter earnings (June – August 2011) of consulting and outsourcing company Accenture that rakes in over $20 billion in annual revenues will be revealed late Tuesday night (India time).

This may serve as firm indicator for many domestic as well as foreign investors to draw implications for Indian IT bigwigs. After Oracle’s strong first quarter revenue performance that went beyond forecasts, experts believe that investors would take cue from Accenture results.

Experts believe that Accenture results will fuel the belief that corporate IT spending has not yet been impacted due to macro-concerns.

Industry analyst concede that every cycle could be different citing historical evidence that software and global services players tend to retain demand longer than Indian vendors in a recession-ridden environment.

Experts estimate Accenture to report fourth quarter revenues of $6.5 billion and earnings per share (EPS) of $0.88 (up 33 per cent year-on-year). Oracle recently reported that licence revenues for first quarter were up 14 per cent and applications were up 23 per cent, both ahead of expectations.

Abhiram Eleswarapu, an analyst at BNP Paribas Securities Asia pointed out that extrapolating Accenture’s latest results for Indian IT companies like TCS, Infosys Wipro or HCL Technologies could be a wee-bit misleading. “For example, in 2008, Indian IT companies year-on-year revenue growth dropped earlier than it did for software and global services players (Accenture). This can be explained by the fact that companies such as Accenture operate on longer-term contracts than Indian companies and their order books tend to last longer,” he said.

Therefore, experts believe investors should be careful about interpreting Accenture’s results for Indian IT companies especially when other indicators like GDP, semiconductors demand are pointing to a slowdown in overall technology demand.