Larsen & Toubro reports 8 pct rise in Q4 net profit on back of strong revenues

Engineering major Larsen & Toubro (L&T) reported a 7.9 percent rise in its consolidated net profit at Rs 3,418.24 crore for the quarter ended March 31, mainly on the back of Strong revenues and improved execution efficiency. Its net profit stood at Rs 3,167.47 crore during the corresponding period a year ago.

The company's consolidated income in the January-March quarter increased to Rs 45,555.29 crore from Rs 41,091.04 crore in Q4 FY18. For the fiscal year 2018-19, the company reported a net profit and revenue of Rs 8,905.13 crore and Rs 142,858.62 crore, respectively. The company had reported revenue of Rs 121,204.03 crore and net profit of Rs 7,369.86 crore in FY19.

"The year has been volatile and there have been challenges around insolvency resolution process, growing shadows of NPAs, failed business models, failed corporations, stretched promoters and lot of credit squeeze in the system," company's Group chief financial officer R Shankar Raman told reporters here. "I think the regulators are also keeping pace with the changes happening around regulations getting tighter and tighter with every passing event. And as though these were not enough, we have distraction due to the political commentary.

In the backdrop of this that we have seen satisfactory outcomes on all its targeted deliverables," Raman said. He further said the company expects a 10-12 percent growth in order inflows in the current fiscal and maintained a revenue guidance of 12-15 percent for the period. The first half of the current fiscal is likely to be modest as the new government will be elected and settled down. We expect this to go back and leaning towards the second half in terms of growth.

In terms of revenues, he said, "We will be somewhere in 12-15 percent once again giving a range because depending the changes in the ministry and the bureaucracy, we need to figure out the enablers that makes the project progress enabling growth in revenues." When asked about the company's take over plans of Mindtree, L&T chief executive officer and managing director SN Subrahmanyan refused to comment saying that there is nothing else to add to whatever is already reported. Subrahmanyan also refused to comment on the proposed acquisition of the group's Electrical & Automation (E&A) business by Schneider Electric.

On the proposed Rs 9,000 crore share buyback plan he said, "it's an ongoing process and we have requested Sebi to relook at the internal guidelines. We feel that when we have cash on hand to return it back to the shareholders then it is a good option to have. We have represented our views to the regulator and the government and we are positive about it." During the year, the company successfully won new orders worth Rs 176,834 crore at the group level registering a growth of 16 percent over the previous year. The international orders during the year at Rs 46,805 crore constituted 26 percent of the total order inflow.