India’s Coromandel International posts Q1 profit fall on weak demand

BENGALURU (Reuters) – Indian agricultural chemicals maker Coromandel International Ltd reported a marginal drop in first-quarter profit on Thursday, hurt by slowing demand.

Consolidated net profit after tax for the quarter fell 1% to 4.94 billion rupees ($60.3 million) from 4.99 billion rupees a year earlier.

Analysts, on average, expected a profit of 4.22 billion rupees, as per Refinitiv data.

Revenue from operations fell 0.6% to 57.29 billion rupees.

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KEY CONTEXT

Analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities said inventory destocking by clients and weak demand from certain end users are projected to continue for the majority of the first half of the current fiscal in the chemicals industry.

Rival Deepak Fertilisers posted a near-75% fall in first-quarter profit on Wednesday.

Coromandel had reported a rise in profit for four consecutive quarters before posting a 15% fall in March-quarter profit.

PEER COMPARISON

Valuation (next Estimates (next 12 Analysts’ sentiment

12 months) months)

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

A growth growth rating* analyst price yield

s target** (%)

Coromandel 14.14 9.56 -14.42 4.87 Buy 9 0.83 1.21

International Ltd

SRF Ltd 27.55 16.73 7.58 2.71 Buy 25 0.81 0.38

Deepak Fertilisers 7.98 6.03 1.31 NULL Buy 1 0.80 1.81

and Petrochemicals

Corp Ltd

Sumitomo Chemical 34.77 25.13 11.31 13.92 Buy 8 0.84 0.29

India Ltd

* 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

APRIL-JUNE STOCK PERFORMANCE

— All data from Refinitiv

— $1 = 81.9374 Indian rupees

(Reporting by Kashish Tandon in Bengaluru; Editing by Sohini Goswami)