Dear Reader,
Thursday was one of those sessions where the headline numbers only told part of the story. Retail, tyres, FMCG, insurance, pharma and consumer appliances all took their turn, but several stocks ended up moving for reasons buried well beneath the top line. Add a handful of management commentaries, and it made for another packed day in earnings season.
Trent, Apollo Tyres, Britannia and LIC set the tone
Trent had the most eventful morning. Its shares initially climbed as much as 3% after the retailer beat expectations across the board, with profit rising 26% to ₹532 crore. But the rally quickly faded as investors focused on a more subtle detail: like-for-like growth in its fashion portfolio came in at just low single digits, a metric that ultimately mattered more than the headline beat.
Apollo Tyres’ quarter needed a closer look. Reported profit jumped to ₹348.9 crore, but much of the improvement came from the absence of last year’s exceptional losses, making the headline growth look stronger than the underlying business suggested. Revenue still grew a healthy 12.8%, while margins narrowed to 11.7% from 13.2%.
Britannia and LIC each produced a different version of the same story — strength in one area, disappointment in another. Britannia’s profit and EBITDA posted healthy double-digit growth from a year ago, yet both came in marginally below Street expectations, with margins easing to 16.8%. LIC’s quarter was even more contrasting. Its value of new business surged 61.3%, while VNB margin expanded by a striking 750 basis points to 22.9%, comfortably ahead of estimates. Total premium equivalent, however, grew just 8.2%, well below what analysts had pencilled in.
Crompton Greaves Consumer Electricals delivered a steady, if unspectacular, quarter. Revenue and profit both grew in double digits, but neither quite matched Street estimates, while EBITDA margin improved only marginally to 10%.
Pharma kept the momentum going
Healthcare continued to be one of the day’s brighter spots.
Hikal sharply reduced its losses as revenue grew more than 30% and EBITDA climbed 49%, lifting margins to 9% from 6.5% a year earlier. Emcure Pharmaceuticals reported a 42% rise in profit, helped by robust international growth, with overseas revenue increasing more than 34% across Europe, Canada and other global markets.
Neuland Laboratories, meanwhile, continued to enjoy the afterglow of Wednesday’s earnings. Its shares rallied another 10%, with all four analysts covering the stock maintaining a Buy rating after the company more than doubled quarterly revenue.
Some of the biggest moves came after the numbers
Not every notable move belonged to Thursday’s results.
Navin Fluorine climbed another 11% to a record high as investors continued to cheer its earnings and expansion plans announced a day earlier. Cummins India, meanwhile, fell 5% as the market continued to digest its ten-quarter-low margin performance and the surprise exit of Managing Director Shveta Arya, even with the stock still up around 20% this year.
Among Thursday’s reporters, Bajaj Electricals stole the spotlight with a near-16% rally — its strongest intraday gain since February 2021 — after profit surged on the back of sharp margin expansion. Blue Star and P&G Health headed the other way, the former after missing revenue estimates amid an uneven summer season, and the latter as investors looked past profit growth that was boosted by a one-off asset sale rather than underlying operations.
Order books — and a few boardrooms worth listening to
NCC reported a 13% rise in profit while its order book crossed ₹81,200 crore, underscoring continued execution strength. Lloyds Engineering Works more than doubled its profit and entered the new financial year with an order book nearly twice the size it was a year earlier.
Beyond Thursday’s earnings, Swiggy remained in focus after its shares rallied on management’s ambition to deliver ₹10,000 crore in adjusted EBITDA by FY31. JK Lakshmi Cement’s Arun Shukla also told CNBC-TV18 that the company remains on track to expand capacity to 23 million tonnes by FY28, while steadily narrowing the profitability gap with larger peers.
That’s Thursday. Follow all the live updates on Q1 earnings and everything else moving the market here.
