Source : http://tinyurl.com/26jelh3
Larsen & Toubro Ltd (LART.BO) met street expectations in its first-quarter net profit, and forecast 20 percent sales growth in this fiscal year to March 2011 on the back of a pick-up in orders.
The country’s largest engineering and construction company maintained its April forecast of 25 percent rise in new order inflows for this fiscal year.
“The pipeline for orders look strong. We see increased bidding activity in the next few quarters and are hopeful the momentum will continue,” L&T’s senior vice president of finance R. Shankar Raman told reporters.
At 2.21 p.m. (0851 GMT), L&T shares, valued by the market at $24.7 billion, were down 1.7 percent at 1,886.70 rupees, after having fallen as much as nearly 4 percent earlier, in the main Mumbai market that was up 0.5 percent.
The company said new orders jumped 63 percent in the quarter from a year ago and said it expected to maintain its growth momentum in the medium-term.
L&T said its order backlog stood at 1.08 trillion rupees ($23 billion) as at the end of June.
L&T, which operates in industries as diverse as engineering, shipbuilding and software, has gained from India’s focus in the past few years to revamp roads and airports, and to expand industrial capacity.
The global financial crisis pressed firms to scale back expansion plans, pulling back L&T’s growth trajectory, with revenues rising only 11 percent in 2009/10, compared with 28 percent in the previous year.
L&T said its net profit in April-June fell to 6.66 billion rupees ($142 million) in the quarter ended June from 15.98 billion rupees a year ago.
The company said its year-ago profit included an exceptional gain of 10.2 billion rupees from the sale of its investment in UltraTech Cement. Excluding this gain, profit grew 15 percent in the June quarter from a year ago.
Sales in the June quarter rose 6.5 percent to 74.31 billion rupees.
A Reuters poll of 11 analysts had estimated net profit of 6.67 billion rupees on net sales of 89 billion.
The L&T stock has risen about 14 percent this year, more than a 3 percent rise in the main index.
Last week, state-run power equipment maker Bharat Heavy Electricals posted a 42 percent jump in June quarter net profit to 6.7 billion rupees.
