India’s NCC posts 21% fall in Q4 profit

BENGALURU (Reuters) – Indian construction firm NCC Ltd on Friday posted a 21.2% drop in fourth-quarter net profit, as the company reported one-time gain from stake sale of its unit in the same quarter previous year.

The company’s consolidated net profit after tax fell to 1.91 billion rupees ($23.12 million) in the three months ended March 31, from 2.42 billion rupees a year earlier.

Revenue from operations jumped 42.3% to 49.49 billion rupees but total expenses rose 38.4% year-on-year to 46.80 billion rupees, mainly on a 80% uptick in sub-contractor bills, and tax expenses more than doubled.

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WHY IT MATTERS

The company had reported a one-time gain of 1.72 billion rupees in the fourth quarter of 2022, from the sale of its stake in unit NCC Vizag Urban Infrastructure Ltd. This also hurt the company’s net profit in the reporting quarter.

However, NCC’s consolidated order book stood at 502.44 billion rupees as of March 31, a 20% sequential increase from the previous quarter.

PEER PERFORMANCE

Valuation (next Estimates (next 12 Analysts’ sentiment

12 months) months)

RIC PE EV/EBITDA Revenue Profit Mean # of Stock to Div

growth growth rating* analyst price yield

s target** (%)

NCC Ltd — 5.14 14.87 21.29 Strong Buy 12 0.86 1.84

KNR Constructions Ltd 14.84 10.41 13.42 19.73 Buy 17 0.78 0.10

PNC Infratech Ltd 12.38 11.56 11.51 9.37 Strong Buy 15 0.76 0.16

G R Infraprojects Ltd 12.19 10.31 -0.94 -36.71 Buy 10 0.79 —

* Mean of analysts’ ratings standardised to a scale of Strong Buy, Buy, Hold, Sell, and Strong Sell ** Ratio of the stock’s last close to analysts’ mean price target; a ratio above 1 means the stock is trading above the PT

JAN-MARCH STOCK PERFORMANCE

— All data from Refinitiv

— $1 = 82.6246 rupees

(Reporting by Priya Sagar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema and Varun H K)