India's Orient Cement Q3 profit slumps as weak pricing adds to soft demand
24/01/2025 10:33
Jan 24 (Reuters) - India's Orient Cement ORCE.NS
reported a slump in third-quarter profit on Friday due to weak
prices of the key construction material amid seasonally low
demand.
The company reported a net profit of 101.4 million rupees
($1.2 million) in the quarter, a fourth of what it had reported
in the year-ago quarter. Its revenues fell more than 14%.
For further earnings highlights, click urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nFWN3OK0PT
KEY CONTEXT
The October-December quarter is a seasonally weak period for
cement companies as construction activity slows, including due
to the number of festivals that span the period.
While cement prices picked up during the quarter, they were
still about 11% lower at the end of December from the year-ago
period, data from brokerages Ambit and Nuvama showed.
On Thursday, market leader UltraTech Cement ULTC.NS
flagged improving price and demand trends after posting a
quarterly earnings beat, while earlier this week, Dalmia Bharat
DALB.NS also signalled for improving quarters ahead.
PEER COMPARISON
Valuation (next 12 Estimates (next 12 Analysts' sentiment
months) months)
RIC PE EV/EBITDA Revenue Profit Mean No. of Stock to Div
growth (%) growth (%) rating* analyst price yield
s target** (%)
Orient Cement ORCE.NS 29.31 13.31 8.44 36.30 Sell 5 1.28 0.67
JK Lakshmi Cement JKLC.NS 24.62 10.74 11.72 35.70 Buy 11 0.97 0.83
ACC ACC.NS 17.46 9.68 8.07 24.70 Buy 17 0.78 0.37
Dalmia Bharat DALB.NS 34.79 11.57 8.93 32.53 Hold 27 0.94 0.50
* 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
OCTOBER-DECEMBER STOCK PERFORMANCE
-- All data from LSEG IBES
-- $1 = 86.1870 Indian rupees
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ORCE Q3 https://tmsnrt.rs/3PSW6It
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(Reporting by Hritam Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio
D'Souza)
((Hritam.Mukherjee@thomsonreuters.com; Twitter:
@MukherjeeHritam;))