India's Torrent Power reports Q3 profit fall on higher expense

BENGALURU (Reuters) - India's Torrent Power reported a fall in third-quarter profit on Thursday, dragged by increased fuel costs.

The company's consolidated net profit fell 47% from the previous year to 3.60 billion rupees ($43.4 million) in the quarter ended Dec. 31.

Revenue slipped marginally to 63.66 billion rupees, marking the first fall in 11 quarters, while fuel costs more than doubled.

For further results highlights, click

KEY CONTEXT

Larger peer Power Grid Corp reported a third-quarter profit jump on Wednesday, benefitting from healthy industrial demand that allowed it to offset elevated fuel costs, including expenses related to coal.

Another competitor, Tata Power, is set to report its results on Friday.

PEER COMPARISON

Valuation Estimates (next 12 months) Analysts' sentiment

(next 12

months)

RIC PE EV/EBI Revenue growth(%) profit growth(%) Mean # of Stock to Div yield (%)

TDA rating* analyst price

s** target

Torrent Power Ltd 20.15 11.23 4.89 10.86 SELL 8 1.55 1.12

NTPC Ltd 15.53 9.45 7.55 16.22 BUY 15 0.96 2.24

Power Grid Corporation 15.47 8.60 3.20 3.60 BUY 9 1.17 4.12

of India Ltd

Tata Power Company Ltd 38.38 14.46 10.16 25.04 HOLD 16 1.38 0.51

* 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

OCT-DEC STOCK PERFORMANCE

-- All data from LSEG

-- $1 = 82.9770 Indian rupees

(Reporting by Yagnoseni Das and Varun Vyas in Bengaluru; Editing by Varun H K and Dhanya An Thoppil)