(Reuters) -India’s Jindal SAW, which makes steel pipes for the energy, transportation and water sectors, reported a smaller fourth-quarter profit on Friday as demand dropped due to a slowdown in construction activity.
The company’s consolidated net profit after tax decreased 42% to 2.91 billion rupees ($34.5 million) in the three months ended March 31.
Revenue from operations fell about 7% to 50.47 billion rupees. Sales of iron and steel pipes dropped 9.2% to 434,000 million tonnes.
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KEY CONTEXT
Domestic steel demand in the January-March quarter was lower than a year earlier as government spending, which had ramped up ahead of the 2024 national general elections, tapered off.
However, falling prices of iron ore and coking coal, key raw materials, lowered Jindal SAW’s expenses, which dropped 4.7% to 46.02 billion rupees.
PEER COMPARISON
Valuation (next Estimates (next 12 Analysts’ sentiment
12 months) months)
RIC PE EV/EBITDA Revenue Profit Mean No. of Stock to Div
growth (%) growth rating* analyst price yield
(%) s target** (%)
Jindal SAW 7.60 5.31 3.34 6.82 Strong 3 0.60 0.81
Buy
APL Apollo Tubes 37.58 24.52 21.88 67.45 Buy 15 0.91 0.34
Ratnamani Metals 28.47 18.99 13.09 18.96 Strong 4 0.79 0.52
and Tubes Buy
Welspun Corp 14.23 9.59 26.91 28.14 Strong 3 0.82 0.65
Buy
* 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
JANUARY-MARCH STOCK PERFORMANCE
— All data from LSEG IBES
— $1 = 84.3940 Indian rupees
(Reporting by Anuran Sadhu in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza)
