Engineering giant larsen & Toubro (l&T) today reported a 14 per cent decline in standalone net profit to Rs977.51 crore after year-ago earnings had been propped up by a one-time gain. Profit after tax excluding exceptional and extraordinary items rose 6.85 per cent to Rs 977.51 crore from Rs 914.76 crore, the company said in a BSE filing.
l&T said the numbers would have been worse had it not been for an increase in overseas orders.
In Q2 of the last fiscal, the company reported net profit of Rs1,137.31 crore, which included an exceptional gain of Rs214.29 crore and an extraordinary item of Rs52.89 crore.
Net sales grew 9.96 per cent to Rs14,509.51 crore from Rs 13,195.23 crore.
“Despite difficult times, we had good growth in sales. International business has done significantly well with it contributing nearly 32 per cent of sales. There was muted growth on the domestic front,” Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer K Venkatraman told reporters here. l&T shares gained 4.2 per cent to Rs872.05 at the close on the BSE. Sanjeev Zarbade, vice president, private client group research at Kotak Securities, said, “l&T numbers are ahead of our expectations, though other income of Rs449 crore was the main reason for profit rise.”
He said the infrastructure and hydrocarbon businesses performed well, while sales in the power, hydrocarbon and metallurgical and material handing divisions declined.
Order inflows grew 27 per cent to Rs26,533 crore from Rs20,967 crore.
“While 71 per cent of the new orders came from the domestic market, 29 per cent came from international market. Our thrust on increasing international footprint is evident, where both sales and order inflow contribution has been increasing,” group CFO S Shankar Raman said.
“The domestic market continues to be challenging. The government is taking initiatives to improve investment sentiment, but for them to translate into order flow for an E&C company like us is a few quarters away,” he said.