Bayer Cropscience posts profit rise in Q1 on corn business strength

Bayer Cropscience, the Indian unit of German drug and pesticide maker Bayer AG, on Monday reported an 8.6% rise in quarterly profit, boosted by strong sales in its corn seeds business.

Profit rose to 3.29 billion rupees ($39.77 million) for the quarter ended June 30, from 3.03 billion rupees a year earlier.

Revenue from operations grew 4.3% to 17.40 billion rupees.

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KEY CONTEXT
 

Easing retail inflation during the quarter helped corn-seeds producing businesses like Bayer Cropsciences to log profits despite a slowdown in its crop protection business.

Agro-chemical makers have been wrestling with slower revenue growth due to lower prices of glyphosate, an active ingredient in many herbicides.
 

Last month, rival UPL reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit, hurt by soft demand.

PEER COMPARISON

Valuation (next 12 Estimates Analysts months) (next 12 ' months) sentimen t RIC PE EV/EBI Price/ Revenue Profit Mean # of Stock to Div TDA Sales growth growth rating* analyst price yield s target** (%) Bayer Cropscience BAYE. 27.23 18.82 NULL 8.31 11.07 Hold 7 0.89 2.52 Ltd NS PI Industries Ltd PIIL. 35.47 25.60 NULL 22.44 19.89 Buy 23 0.94 0.27 NS Rallis India Ltd RALL. 22.11 11.03 NULL 8.63 63.87 Sell 15 1.06 1.17 NS UPL Ltd UPLL. 10.69 5.91 NULL 2.93 8.12 Buy 23 0.76 1.67 NS

* The mean of analyst ratings standardised to a scale of Strong Buy, Buy, Hold, Sell, and Strong Sell ** The ratio of the stock's last close to analysts' mean price target; a ratio above 1 means the stock is trading above the PT

APRIL-JUNE STOCK PERFORMANCE

-- All data from Refinitiv

-- $1 = 82.7170 Indian rupees

(Reporting by Biplob Kumar Das in Bengaluru)