Earnings growth worries

India Inc's show comes as a damper

The July-September 2017 earnings of India Inc were muted as companies struggled to adjust to the goods and services tax that rolled out on July 1. While revenue growth was the second best in three years, profitability proved to be a major concern. The combined net profit for 1,852 companies declined by 2.6 per cent, year-on-year (YoY), even as revenue grew by 8.7 per cent. The financial and energy sectors propped up the overall numbers; excluding them, revenue growth was just 6.9 per cent while net profit plummeted by 6.9 per cent as increasing raw material and employee costs also