(Reuters) -India’s R R Kabel reported a much higher second-quarter profit on Friday, boosted by strong demand for its mainstay wires and cables.
Consolidated profit for the quarter ended September more than doubled year-on-year to 1.16 billion rupees ($13.20 million), while revenues rose 20% over the same period.
Wires and cables revenue, which formed 91% of the company’s topline, grew 22%.
However, total expenses rose 15%, mainly due to higher prices of copper, a key raw material. Copper LME prices rose 6.3% on-year in the reported quarter, brokerage Anand Rathi said in an earnings preview note.
The company said Jigar Mehta will succeed Rajesh Jain as the chief finance officer November 1 onwards. Jain will move to head the operations of the wires and cables business.
For more earnings highlights, click here.
KEY CONTEXT
R R Kabel is benefitting from a demand rush for wires and cables, stemming from the Indian government’s sustained focus on infrastructure and a buoyant real estate sector.
This has also attracted new deep-pocketed players, such as Aditya Birla Group’s UltraTech Cement and rival Adani Group, which analysts have said will intensify competition at home.
R R Kabel is also India’s largest wire and cable exporter by revenue share of exports, and counts geographies such as the U.S., Europe and West Asia as key markets.
But tariff uncertainty in the U.S. has pushed the company to explore supplying more products to other geographies.
PEER COMPARISON
Valuation (next 12 Estimates (next 12 Analysts’ sentiment
months) months)
RIC PE EV/EBIT Price/S Revenue Profit Mean # of Stock to Div
DA ales growth (%) growth rating* analysts price yield
(%) target** (%)
R R Kabel Ltd 33.97 21.31 – 15.50 26.40 Buy 8 0.90 0.50
Havells India Ltd 51.20 34.55 3.73 11.72 17.98 Buy 25 0.89 0.66
Polycab India Ltd 40.76 27.76 3.72 19.33 21.37 Buy 28 0.95 0.45
V Guard Industries 40.73 25.95 – 11.20 19.66 Buy 17 0.85 0.41
Ltd
* The mean of analyst ratings standardised to a scale of Strong Buy, Buy, Hold, Sell, and Strong Sell
** The ratio of the stock’s last close to analysts’ mean price target; a ratio above 1 means the stock is trading above the PT
JULY-SEPTEMBER STOCK PERFORMANCE
— All data from LSEG
— $1 = 87.8950 Indian rupees
(Reporting by Hritam Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)
