From worst paymaster to best earner, CLSA's key findings about Indian firms

HDFC's salary per employee highest, YES Bank workforce grew 34% in FY17, shows CLSA report

If you thought job losses and lack of employment opportunities was one of the greatest problems facing Indian companies, think again. The workforce of YES Bank, for instance, grew by 34 per cent in 2016-17 over a year earlier to 20,000. Its staff cost during the year increased 39 per cent, reveals a report by brokerage and investment firm CLSA.

The report also observes that HDFC’s earnings per employee was Rs 3.2 crore in 2016-17, compared with the average of a low Rs 27 lakh for BSE 500 companies. It added through Reliance Jio, employment opportunities were created directly and indirectly for more than 5 million people.

 
CLSA analysed the annual reports of 76 Indian firms, accounting for $1 trillion or 50 per cent of the total market capitalisation, keeping in view the rollout of the goods and services tax (GST), affordable housing, digitisation, rural recovery, Make in India and smart-city benefits.
 
Here are the key findings of the report:

Job-loss worries overdone: CLSA says that that the job creation does not seem to have slowed as much as feared. Among listed companies (BSE 500), job growth of 3.4 per cent in FY17 is not down much on the 4.2 per cent recorded in FY16. Information technology (IT) and finance drove the bulk of organised sector job creation in the listed space.

There was no job creation in the public sector undertaking (PSU) segment, with certain exceptions such as Punjab National Bank (PNB). 

Biggest hiring increase: YES Bank’s total workforce grew by 34 per cent Y-o-Y to more than 20,000 and staff costs were up 39 per cent in FY17.

Highest earnings per employee: HDFC has the highest earnings per employee at Rs 3.2 crore vs average at BSE500 companies of Rs 27 lakh.

 

Women employees: The participation of women is highest in IT and banks and lowest in materials and autos. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has the highest number of women employees among listed companies at 34 per cent of its total workforce. Infosys has the highest proportion at 36 per cent.

The total women participation has gone up to 23 per cent in FY17 from 21.6 per cent in FY16.

Highest number of employees: TCS and Coal India are the only listed companies in India with more than 300,000 permanent employees.

Biggest employers: Financials and technology companies together employ more than 40 per cent of the workforce.

 

Eldest CEO: At 70, IPCA Labs’ CMD Mr Premchand Godha, is the oldest executive head of a listed company in India. The average CEO age is highest in private banks and lowest in media and property

Salary decline: Among key companies disclosing average salary hikes for their employees, Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) is the only one where there is a decline (-1.5 per cent) in FY17.

Disparity in salary: Ratio of chief executive officer/managing director (CEO/MD) salaries to that of median employees is the highest for Hero Motocorp at 731x and lowest for PSUs such as SBI at 2.5x.

Lowest CEO salary: Lowest CEO/MD salary is Rs 30 lakh for State Bank of India (SBI), Bank of Baroda and Corporation Bank.

Total employee count: Annual-report data suggests that total employee count rose by 2.8 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) in FY16. The employee count increased from 4.8 mn at the end of FY15 to 4.9 mn at the end of FY16, thus creating net about 130,000 jobs during the year.

IT and financials biggest job creator: Financial and IT have the highest number of employees, accounting for over 40 per cent of total headcount and 90 per cent of the added jobs. However, the IT services segment is now witnessing a slowdown.

 

Real estate: The sector saw 5 per cent loss in jobs. However, most jobs in real estate are created on a contractual basis and are not captured in this data, but it has also seen a slowdown due to the housing slowdown.

Industrials and energy also saw job losses, attributable to weakness in infra capex in the economy.

Lower interest-cost benefits to show up in FY18/19: The 200 bps cut in Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) benchmark interest rate has resulted in about a 150 bps reduction in bank lending rates over the past two years. A larger decline (50bps+) in banks’ key lending rate from January has resulted in several companies talking about their interest costs becoming visibly lower.

Average number of pages: Average number of pages per annual report from a list of more than 70 FY17 annual reports is 274 pages.

Longest annual report: Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) has the longest annual report (ex-subsidiary financials) with a total of 460 pages.

Shortest annual report: Coal India has the shortest annual report with 140 pages.

Job growth in PSU banks: Canara Bank, PNB, Syndicate Bank and Vijaya Bank saw 5 per cent growth in their workforce in FY17.

‘Demonetisation’ was used 469 times in annual reports of 61 companies (among 75 companies) with SBI using it most at 29 times.

‘GST’ was used 351 times by 56 companies with RIL using it most at 26 times.

Longest annual report with subsidiary accounts: Larsen & Toubro’s (L&T) annual report with subsidiary financials is 5,150 pages.

Online apparel sales: About 9 per cent of apparel sales are through the internet. Apparel contributes almost 30 per cent to India’s total e-commerce revenue.

Online electricity bill payment: For CESC, 28.5 per cent of consumers paid their electricity bill online during FY17 versus 17.2per cent in FY16.

Online movie ticketing: For PVR, online movie ticketing rose from 26 per cent of total admits in FY15 to 45 per cent in FY17.

Low-income housing loans: Axis Bank’s low-income housing loans, called ‘Asha loans’, jumped by 66 per cent during FY17 to Rs 31 billion.

Steelcapex: JSW Steel plans to invest Rs 268 billion to expand steel capacity to 23 MTPA by March 2020.

Renewable energy focus: For Asian Paints, 22 per cent of total energy requirements at its paint-manufacturing locations was met by renewable energy.

Reduction in carbon footprint: Hindustan Unilever increased the share of renewable energy to 28 per cent. Its carbon footprint in manufacturing locations is down 13 per cent YoY.

Data analytics usage: For Marico, data analytics has led to optimisation of sales savings of more than Rs 35 crore.

Flexi-job creation: Listed flexi-job providers — Quess Corp, Team Lease and SIS — together have 0.43 m employees, higher than any listed company in India.