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HCLTech Shares Today: Shares of HCL Technologies (HCLTech) traded in red on Friday after the IT major company announced the acquisition of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) Telco Solutions Business for USD 160 million, including USD 15 million linked to FY25 performance incentives.

The stock came under mild pressure as investors assessed the strategic impact of the deal, even as HCLTech highlighted the long-term benefits for its telecom and AI-led services portfolio.

In an exchange filing, HCLTech said the acquisition will help deepen its engineering-driven, AI-enabled network capabilities for global communication service providers (CSPs). The deal follows an earlier transaction with HPE in 2024, strengthening HCLTech’s telecom software and services footprint.

The Telco Solutions business supports over one billion devices across 200-plus global deployments, offering platforms for Operations Support Systems (OSS), Home Subscriber Server (HSS) and 5G Subscriber Data Management. It also enables AI-led closed-loop network automation, helping telecom operators improve network efficiency and monetisation.

Telco Solutions was earlier part of HPE’s Communications Technology Group (CTG). HCLTech said the CTG assets acquired in 2024—covering business support systems, network applications, data intelligence and service cloudification—have been fully integrated and are now witnessing growth.

Following the announcement, Morgan Stanley maintained an 'equal-weight' rating on HCLTech with a target price of Rs 1,680, against a current market price of Rs 1,661. The brokerage happens to believe that the financial impact of the acquisition may be limited, given its relatively small size.

Morgan Stanley also highlighted that HCLTech has largely focused on organic growth in recent years, complemented by selective tuck-in M&A, particularly in telecom services, engineering and AI-led platforms.