India's Arvind Fashions swings to quarterly profit on demand for premium products

BENGALURU (Reuters) - Indian retailer Arvind Fashions swung to quarterly profit on Thursday, helped by strong demand for its premium products.

The company, which sells clothing from brands such as Arrow, Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, reported a consolidated net profit of 13.2 million rupees ($157,621.35) against a loss of 164.3 million rupees a year ago.

Its revenue from operations rose 10.2% to 9.55 billion rupees.

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KEY CONTEXT

Indian retailers have been offering heavy discounts to sway customers amid heightened competition. Premium products, aimed at high-income consumers, have remained a key driver of sales growth.

For Arvind Fashions, sales of premium products and doubling of womenswear business were the major growth drivers in the June quarter.

Last month, Shoppers Stop reported a dip in its quarterly profit.

PEER COMPARISON

Valuation Estimates (next Analysts' sentiment

(next 12 12 months)

months)

RIC PE EV/EBI Revenue Profit Mean No of Stock to Div

TDA growth growth rating analysts price yield

(%) (%) * target** (%)

Arvind 44.45 11.97 12.71 50.91 Strong 5 0.89 0.25

Fashions Ltd Buy

Shoppers Stop 83.76 20.57 16.87 30.58 Hold 6 0.95 -

Ltd

Trent Ltd 120.93 69.78 35.59 52.91 Buy 12 1.35 0.06

Aditya Birla - 21.08 15.47 - Sell 17 1.26 -

Fashion and

Retail Ltd

* Mean of analysts' ratings standardised to a scale of Strong Buy, Buy, Hold, Sell, and Strong Sell

** Ratio of the stock's last close to analysts' mean price target; a ratio above 1 means the stock is trading above the PT

APRIL-JUNE STOCK PERFORMANCE

-- All data from LSEG IBES

-- $1 = 83.7450 Indian rupees

(Reporting by Ashish Chandra in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)