Slowdown worsens; India Inc profits tank 2/3rd in Q2

The ongoing slowdown in the Indian economy seems to have worsened as the performance of India Inc has tanked terribly in the September quarter. Both profits, as well as the topline of India Inc, tanked in the quarter despite some of them availing the benefits of the corporate tax cut announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

During the quarter, the bottomline of the India Inc tanked by an astounding 65% during the second quarter to paltry Rs 30,205 crore, according to data available with CARE Ratings. In the corresponding quarter of the last financial year, it had slumped to 8.93% to Rs 86,300 crore.

Similarly, the topline of the India Inc has tanked by 2.7% in the September quarter, compared with 21% growth last year. The total sales of India Inc stood at Rs 16.15 lakh crore, compared with Rs 16.60 lakh crore in the corresponding quarter last year.

The profitability of India Inc has also been severely hit during the quarter, which can be seen as quite contrary to the bull raging in the equity markets. As profits declined faster than the sales, the profit margins of India Inc fell to petty 1.9% from 5.2% last year.

On the half-yearly basis, the profits of the India Inc tanked by an astounding 27.7% to Rs 1.32 lakh crore from Rs 1.83 lakh crore a year ago. The topline, however, remained flat at Rs 32.8 lakh crore, a marginal jump of 0.4% from Rs 32.7 lakh crore a year ago.

The data set has been compiled from the earning releases of 2,398 listed companies in India. Of all these companies, 932 showed a decline in their sales, 355 showed single-digit growth in their revenues while remaining showed double-digit growth.

“The contraction in aggregate sales can be associated with a broad-based decline in sales growth in H1-FY20 across different company size, CARE Ratings said in a note.

With dampened industrial production, terrible show in the corporate earnings, the analysts say that GDP number for the second quarter could be far worse than the market expectations.