Engineering firm Larsen & Toubro (L&T) today reported a 4.72 per cent rise in consolidated net profit to Rs 3,167.47 crore in the March quarter on the back of improvement in project execution.
It had clocked a net profit of Rs 3,024.61 crore in the same quarter last year.
Gross revenue increased by 10.45 per cent to Rs 40,678.1 crore, compared with Rs 36,827.99 crore.
For financial year 2017-18, the company's net profit rose by 22 per cent to Rs 7,369.86 crore, from Rs 6,041.23 in the previous year. Its total revenues grew by 9.5 per cent to Rs 1,19,862.10 crore, from Rs 1,10,011 crore.
"For the current fiscal year, we think the order inflow should be 10-12 per cent higher than FY18 and the revenues given the execution challenges should be between 12-15 per cent in terms of growth," L&T's group chief financial officer R Shankar Raman told reporters here.
On the performance of the company, he said, "It has been a satisfactory year mainly in the context of the environment that we have been in where the company is caught in the cross currents between the headwinds and the tailwinds blowing at the same time."
He said the headwinds like declining exports, rising imports, weakening currency, oil prices tending to go up and the trend of commodity prices drifting up, are throwing up their own challenges.
However, Raman added, the tailwinds such as implementation of GST, Rera, push for resolution of NPAs under IBC and continued thrust on infrastructure are satisfactory in terms of financial outcome.
L&T won fresh orders worth Rs 1,52,908 crore at the group level during FY18, registering a 7 per cent growth over the previous year. The international orders during the year at Rs 35,853 crore accounted for 23 per cent of the total inflow.
The order intake for the March quarter stood at Rs 49,557 crore, registering a 5 per cent year-on-year growth.
The consolidated order book of the group stood at Rs 263,107 crore as on March 31, 2018, with international order book constituting 24 per cent of the total.
"The order book gives a certain predictability in terms of revenue and profit growth plans of next three years. It doesn't mean we don't need new orders, but it means the baseline is adequately covered. What we need is the top up churn that the environment would provide us the opportunity and L&T will have the competency and competitive advantage of that situation," Raman said.
He further said the domestic orders (15 per cent rise) have outrun the overseas orders (14 per cent rise) given the geopolitical concerns on the international environment.
During the year, the company eliminated Rs 16,000 crore worth of orders, especially in the infrastructure segment, which in its assessment were non-moving even though they have not been cancelled by the customers.
L&T's infrastructure segment achieved revenues of Rs 59,083 crore for FY18, clocking a 12 per cent year-on-year growth with pick up of execution momentum in the later part of the year, while the power business topline declined by 11 per cent to Rs 6,201 crore, he said.
The heavy engineering segment recorded a revenue of Rs 3,845 crore, a 22 per cent growth, while the hydrocarbon business earnings stood at Rs 11,736 crore, up 22 per cent.
Raman said L&T launched its first infrastructure investment trust (InvIT) floated by L&T Infrastructure Development Projects, and has raised Rs 4,700 crore.
"As of now we have listed five road projects out of the 15, in this InvIT. The idea is to enable development of secondary investors. Going forward, as and when the road projects get ready and there is appetite from investors, we will add the road projects in the InvIT. Right now our focus is to give 12-14 per cent returns to the investors," he said.
The shares of the company closed 2.52 per cent up at Rs 1,377.60 a piece on BSE today, against 0.69 per cent rise in the benchmark.
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