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India's UltraTech Cement tops Q4 earnings view, sees moderate demand in financial 2025

UltraTech Cement , India's biggest cement maker by capacity, topped fourthquarter earnings approximates on Monday on strong sales volumes but said it expects need to moderate in the present fiscal year.

There might be some small amounts in cement demand in FY25, but anticipate it to be of lesser period than in the past, stated Finance Chief Atul Daga in a post-earnings call.

Experts have actually been expecting subdued need in the first half of the fiscal 2025 due to slowdown in building activity amidst the basic elections and a most likely healthy monsoon.

The world's largest election began on April 19 and will period over 6 weeks up until June.

UltraTech's combined net revenue rose 35.5% to 22.58 billion rupees ($ 270.5 million) in the quarter ended March, as lower cement costs enhanced sales. Experts, typically, expected earnings of 20.80 billion rupees.

This is the business's highest quarterly revenue in two years.

Cement prices dropped 5% sequentially to strike a two-year-low in the noted quarter, as cement companies administered discount rates to fulfill their financial year-end volume targets and ward off hard competitors in a seasonally strong quarter.

Cement prices in the nation are not expected to go down even more, Daga said.

UltraTech's sales volumes increased 11% in the fourth quarter across India, within the 9% -12% growth range estimated by analysts.

That assisted drive the Aditya Birla Group business's revenue from operations up 9.4% to 204.19 billion rupees - the highest since a minimum of the June quarter of fiscal 2014. Analysts anticipated earnings at 200.64 billion rupees.

Indian cement makers have actually taken advantage of strong facilities and residential or commercial property sector demand in the past couple of quarters.

Meanwhile, an increase in freight and input costs drove total costs 6.7% greater.

Strong sales volume also helped smaller sized peers Dalmia Bharat and ACC to report better-than-expected fourth-quarter profits.

UltraTech's shares ended 2.7% higher on the day.

(source: Reuters)