BENGALURU (Reuters) -India’s UltraTech Cement posted third-quarter profit above Street expectations on Friday, supported by price hikes of its construction materials amid sustained infrastructure demand.
Consolidated net profit jumped nearly 68% to 17.77 billion rupees ($214 million) – the highest since the March quarter of 2022. Analysts on average expected profit of 17.3 billion rupees, as per LSEG data.
Revenue from operations climbed about 8% to 167.40 billion rupees for three months ended Dec. 31, beating analysts’ average estimate of 166.19 billion rupees, as per LSEG data.
Cement prices in India, on average, rose 2.5% sequentially during the quarter, brokerage Systematix said, helping cement makers to yield more from their sales.
The Aditya Birla group-backed UltraTech Cement said earlier this month that volumes, including overseas sales, increased 6% to 27.3 million tonnes in the quarter. Analysts were expecting volumes to grow in the range of 5%-5.6%.
Ongoing projects, such as Mumbai metro and expressway construction in its key markets of west and central India helped sustain infrastructure demand, the company said.
Cement makers have been benefitting from the demand surge from the housing and infrastructure sectors, aided further by the government’s spending push.
This is UltraTech Cement’s first quarterly earnings after it bought Kesoram’s cement assets for $645 million, in a move to add heft to its hold in southern India. The region contributes the least to UltraTech’s total capacity, according to its latest annual report.
The company’s shares climbed as much as 2.4% to hit a two-week high after results.
($1 = 83.0870 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Hritam Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala and Eileen Soreng)
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