Another weak quarter

High costs and weak sales hurt India Inc

Corporate India is facing new challenges to growth, going by the April-June quarterly financial data of more than 600 companies that have declared their results so far. The gains from lower commodity and energy prices are over and operating margins are now on a downward trajectory due to a combination of higher raw material costs and lower growth in revenues. For the entire sample of 687 companies, net profit has declined 2.8 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in the June 2017 quarter, which is the worst in five quarters. If companies in the oil and gas, and banking and financial sectors