India's Blue Dart reports smaller Q3 profit on rising freight costs

Mahindra Logistics

29/01/2025 14:32

Jan 29 (Reuters) - Indian courier delivery firm Blue Dart Express  BLDT.NS  reported a fall in
third-quarter profit on Wednesday due to higher freight costs. 
    The company's consolidated net profit fell 8.9% year-on-year to 810.1 million rupees ($9.4 million)
for the quarter ended Dec. 31. 
    Total expenses rose 9% due to an 11% jump in freight costs, which hurt the company's bottom line.
    Its revenue from operations rose 9.3% to 15.12 billion rupees during the quarter.
    For further earnings highlights, click  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nFWN3OP1MO
    
KEY CONTEXT
    A slowdown in India's economic activity has weighed on the demand for services of domestic
logistics companies, which also cater to other businesses, analysts said.
    These companies have additionally been grappling with soaring costs and tough competition,
especially from the logistics arms of e-commerce platforms such as Amazon  AMZN.O .
    On Monday, rival Mahindra Logistics  MALO.NS  also flagged higher expenses as it reported its
eighth straight quarterly loss. 

PEER COMPARISON
    
                                 Valuation    Estimates (next 12      Analysts' sentiment       
                                 (next 12          months)                                      
                                  months)                                                       
                    RIC        PE     EV/EBI  Revenue    Profit   Mean    # of     Stock to     Div
                                      TDA     growth     growth   rating  analyst  price        yield
                                              (%)        (%)      *       s        target**     (%)
 Blue Dart Express   BLDT.NS   34.76   16.43    12.54     44.16   Hold          6     0.86         0.39
 Ltd                                                                                            
 Delhivery Ltd       DELH.NS   66.74   32.50    15.85    216.21   Buy          21     0.71      NULL
 Mahindra            MALO.NS   38.63    7.94    15.26    704.68   Sell         11     0.96         0.71
 Logistics Ltd                                                                                  
 VRL Logistics Ltd   VRLL.NS   22.38    8.86    12.47     46.93   Buy           9     0.72         1.13
 * The mean of analysts' ratings standardized 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
    
OCTOBER-DECEMBER STOCK PERFORMANCE
-- All data from LSEG
-- $1 =  86.5500 Indian rupees


($1 = Indian rupees)

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 (Reporting by Vijay Malkar in Bengaluru)
 ((VijayDattaram.Malkar@thomsonreuters.com; +91 8097833031;))