India's Bayer CropScience Q1 profit falls on sluggish demand

BENGALURU (Reuters) - Bayer CropScience, the Indian unit of German drug and pesticide maker Bayer AG, reported a 22.6% fall in its first-quarter profit on Thursday due to sluggish demand for its crop-protection products.

The company's profit for the April-June quarter declined to 2.54 billion rupees ($30.3 million), while revenue dropped by 6.2% to 16.31 billion rupees from 17.4 billion rupees a year earlier.

For further results highlights, click [FWN3JV18B].

KEY CONTEXT

Agrochemical and fertilizer companies experienced a lackluster performance in the first quarter due to factors such as excessive inventory in the domestic market, leading to continuous pressure on volume and margins.

Peer UPL posted a bigger-than-expected quarterly loss as it took a hit from rising input costs.

PEER COMPARISON

Valuation (next 12 Estimates (next 12 Analysts' sentiment

months) months)

RIC PE EV/EBITDA Revenue Profit Mean # of Stock to Div yield (%)

growth (%) growth rating* analyst price target

(%) s **

Bayer CropScience 36.05 26.12 11.32 12.35 BUY 7 1.14 2.02

Ltd

PI Industries Ltd 38.61 26.18 15.55 4.90 BUY 24 1.06 0.34

Rallis India Ltd 37.44 18.10 11.56 24.65 SELL 14 1.41 0.69

UPL Ltd 19.04 7.55 7.43 NULL BUY 23 0.93 0.18

* 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 = 83.9280 rupees

(Reporting by Yagnoseni Das in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)