L&T beats street outlook with 19% growth in March quarter net

MUMBAI: Larsen & Toubro beat street estimates by reporting betterthan-expected sales and profit in the March quarter, but the engineering major reported a decline in new orders and gave a “lukewarm” outlook, citing continuation of a slowdown in the infrastructure sector.

The company reported a net profit of Rs 2,453.6 crore, up 19% year-on-year. Revenue rose 18% to Rs 33,157 crore.

A Bloomberg poll had pegged profit at Rs 1,949.9 crore and revenue atRs 30,248.9 crore. “Our order book is now largely dependent on government investment as the private sector is going through a stressful time. Almost 25-30% of the jobs that came from the private sector are not there anymore,” Chairman AM Naik told reporters.

“We see little better prospects in FY17 compared with the previous year. The leadership in the government is very good but implementation is taking longer than expected,” Naik said.

L&T started FY16 with order inflow guidance of 15%, subsequently lowered it to 10%, but ended the year by reporting a decline of 12% with new orders of Rs 1,36,900 crore. It also deducted slow moving orders worth overRs 15,000 crore from its order book, anticipating that customers may not go ahead with the project.