L&T meet on March 21 for fund plan

Larsen & Toubro Ltd., the country's largest construction and engineering company, today said its board would meet on March 21 to consider raising funds for the financial year beginning April.

The board would consider options such as debt, overseas convertible bonds and depository receipts, according to a company statement.

Shares in L&T fell 1.37 per cent to Rs 2507.35 against the previous close of Rs 2542.10 in a firm Mumbai market.

Recently, the company had launched a $100 million foreign currency convertible bonds issue denominated in Japanese yen.

The company has plans to enter new areas like deep water engineering and construction, power, steel, and ship building. It had acquired a contract worth Rs 1,300 crore from the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) for deep water projects.

The company is also looking at doubling its revenues from the West Asian region in the next five years.

In the power generation segment, L&T's plan is to produce hydel power. It has already made bids for three small hydropower projects in Himachal Pradesh. L&T intends to start with smaller projects of up to 250 MW L&T also plans to build townships in project areas.

L&T posted a 95.90 per cent growth in net profit at Rs 259.27 crore in the third quarter of the current financial year compared with Rs 132.35 crore reported in the corresponding period last year.

The net sales, during the period, went up 13.52 per cent to Rs 3,666.36 crore from the corresponding previous period's Rs 3,229.46 crore.