Shares of the country's largest cigarette maker - ITC - rose as much as 1.79 per cent to hit an intraday high of Rs 238.50 on the BSE after it reported its December quarter earnings post market hours on Thursday. The Kolkata-based company reported net profit of Rs 4,118.8 crore in third quarter of current financial year marking an increase of 15 per cent on the back of robust demand across business verticals.
The company had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 3,587.2 crore in the corresponding period last fiscal, ITC Ltd said in a regulatory filing.
During the third quarter, the cigarettes segment clocked a revenue of Rs 6,958.79 crore as compared to Rs 6,091.17 crore in the same period last fiscal.
ITC said its other FMCG division had a revenue of Rs 4,099.47 crore as against Rs 3,752.61 crore in the year-ago quarter.
There has been robust growth in discretionary, out-of-home categories such as snacks, frozen snacks and beverages, while staples and convenience foods showed resilient performance, it added.
The hotels' segment registered revenue of Rs 495.53 crore, up from Rs 248.87 crore in the third quarter of last fiscal. Occupancy has recovered to pre-pandemic levels and there is also a strong sequential improvement in the average room rate but is still below pre-pandemic levels.
Although domestic leisure travel and the festive, wedding season boosted demand along with progressive improvement in business travel, the Omicron wave has impacted recovery momentum in January 2022, ITC said.
Brokerage firm Motilal Oswal in a research report said that revenue was higher than its expectations, led by outperformance in the agri and hotels businesses, but overall earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) and profit after (PAT) was in line estimates.
"The positive surprise was the cigarette volume growth of 13 per cent. We were expecting some disruption towards the end of December quarter on account of the COVID-led restrictions beginning from the last fortnight of December 2021. It is true that this growth was on a 7 per cent volume decline. Nevertheless, average cigarette volume and EBIT growth over the last two-years remains between 2 per cent and 3 per cent. With input costs led pressures weighing on FMCG – Others’ margin YoY, EBIT diversification away from Cigarettes will take time. We maintain our Neutral view on stock with target price of Rs 245," Motilal Oswal said.
As of 11:53 am, ITC shares traded 0.6 per cent higher at Rs 236, outperforming the Sensex which was down 0.2 per cent.
