India's Torrent Power's Q1 profit jumps 88% on robust demand

BENGALURU (Reuters) - Indian energy provider Torrent Power posted an 88% rise in first-quarter profit on Tuesday, helped by surging power demand.

The company, a unit of Torrent Group, said its consolidated net profit rose to 9.72 billion rupees ($116.1 million) in the April-June quarter, from 5.17 billion rupees a year ago.

Revenue from operations rose 23.3% to 90.34 billion rupees.

For further results highlights, click

KEY CONTEXT

A severe heatwave in India during the April-June period boosted base power demand by 10%, according to Elara Securities. Rising power demand, increased capacity additions and adoption of green hydrogen should continue to drive growth in the utility sector, the brokerage said.

Heatwaves and increasing economic activity have resulted in India's electricity generation growing at an average of about 8% annually following the pandemic.

India expects power generation to grow 9.3% to 1,900 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in fiscal 2025.

PEER COMPARISON

Valuation (next Estimates (next Analysts' sentiment

12 months) 12 months)

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

DA growth growth rating* analysts price yield

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

Torrent 30.35 15.34 12.38 24.26 Hold 10 1.32 1.04

Power Ltd

Tata Power 29.59 13.64 12.75 22.64 Hold 20 1.17 0.47

Company Ltd

NTPC Ltd 17.04 10.45 6.41 8.09 Buy 15 0.97 2.03

Power Grid 19.27 10.10 4.20 4.77 Hold 13 1.12 3.55

Corporation

of India Ltd

* 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 IBES

-- $1 = 83.7030 Indian rupees

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