India's JK Lakshmi Cement Q1 profit doubles on lower expenses

BENGALURU (Reuters) - India's JK Lakshmi Cement on Wednesday reported a two-fold rise in first-quarter profit, aided by lower expenses.

The company's net profit after tax stood at 1.56 billion rupees ($18.7 million) for the quarter ended June 30, compared to 748.8 million rupees a year ago. Total expenses fell 13% to 13.26 billion rupees year-on year.

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KEY CONTEXT

India's general elections, and an extreme summer season spanning the April-June period, restricted construction activities and hit sales volumes for cement makers. Additionally, with competition in the sector stiffening, companies resorted to discounts or rolling back price hikes from earlier in the quarter, weakening their margins.

JK Lakshmi's quarterly sales volumes fell 8% to 2.3 million tonnes year-on-year, but costs fell more, with a 28% drop in fuel-related expenses.

India's largest cement maker UltraTech Cement reported first-quarter profit and revenue below estimates, while rival ACC Cement also reported a profit-miss.

PEER COMPARISON

Valuation (next Estimates (next 12 Analysts' sentiment

12 months) months)

RIC PE EV/EBI Revenue Profit Mean # of Stock to Div

TDA growth (%) growth rating analysts price target yield

(%) (%)

JK Lakshmi 17.17 9.08 9.33 18.11 BUY 11 0.94 0.34

Cement

India Cements 88.57 26.42 6.88 NULL SELL 5 2.12 0.00

Ramco Cements 36.03 13.43 5.43 17.58 HOLD 21 0.95 0.30

Nuvoco Vistas 34.62 9.15 6.74 87.94 BUY 16 0.89 -

Corporation

* The mean of analyst ratings standardised to a scale of Strong Buy, Buy, Hold, Sell, and Strong Sell

** The 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

-- $1 = 83.6560 Indian rupees

(Reporting by Anisha Ajith in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)