Engineering conglomerate Larsen and Toubro (L&T) on Wednesday reported an 18.5 per cent jump in its fourth quarter net profit to Rs. 2,454 crore, beating the estimates of 15 per cent growth due to better pace of execution and winning more orders for building roads and power transmission networks.
Despite operating in a challenging business environment, the improvement in bottomline came on the back of an 18 per cent rise in turnover in the same period to Rs. 33,160 crore.
For the year 2016-17, however, L&T’s growth was muted and it missed the order inflow target it had set for itself. The company had expected to grow its order book by 15 per cent in FY16.
L&T garnered fresh orders worth Rs. 1,36,858 crore at the group level during the quarter. The consolidated order book of the group stood at Rs. 2,49,949 crore as of March 31, higher by 7 per cent on a year-on-year basis, with international orders constituting 28 per cent of the total. This order book does not include another Rs. 15,000 crore worth of orders that are with the company, but which have been moving slowly due to lack of funds with the sponsors of these projects.
L&T shares closed at Rs. 1,291.30 on the Bombay Stock Exchange, up 4.02 per cent from the previous close while the Sensex Index rose 2.28 per cent to close at 25,881.17 points.
