Related News:
Larsen & Toubro Expects Sales Growth to Accelerate to 20% on Road Projects
Larsen & Toubro Ltd., India’s biggest engineering company, said sales growth may accelerate in the year ending March 31 as it wins projects to build roads, rail network and power plants.
The company based in Mumbai forecasts sales to expand 20 percent this year after revenue rose 8.3 percent in the 12 months that ended March 31, Executive Vice President for Finance R. Shankar Raman said at a briefing today.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government is accelerating construction of infrastructure projects to boost growth in Asia’s third-largest economy. India, ranked below war-ravaged Ivory Coast and Sri Lanka for the quality of infrastructure, needs to spend $1 trillion on power plants and public work projects in the five years ending 2017, according to the nation’s Planning Commission.
“Water and hydroelectric projects are areas where Larsen is interested,” Shankar Raman said. India’s economic growth is accelerating and governments in the Middle East are spending on infrastructure projects, which will “all contribute to a sustained growth in order book.”
The company, the third-largest by market value in the MSCI AC Asia Pacific excluding Japan Industrials Index, fell 3 percent to 1,862 rupees at close of trading in Mumbai.
Larsen & Toubro today said first-quarter net income fell to 6.66 billion rupees ($142.5 million) from 16 billion rupees a year earlier on the lack of one-time gain. Profit was lower than the 6.8 billion rupee average estimate of 15 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Profit at the company rose 15 percent after taking out last year’s 10.1 billion rupee gain from selling its cement unit.
Sales in the quarter rose 6.5 percent to 78.4 billion rupees, the company said in a statement today.
The company won contracts valued at 14.4 billion rupees for the construction of residential and factory buildings, according to a statement on June 18. Larsen & Toubro on July 14 said it won the bid to construct the 120 billion rupee Hyderabad Metro Rail project.
To contact the reporter on this story: Suprotip Ghosh in New Delhi at Sghosh47@bloomberg.net
Rate These Stories
Rate this Page