India November 6 : Bharat heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) posted a worse-than-expected sixty four per cent fall in quarterly net profit on Wednesday, the fifth straight drop, as a slowdown in demand ate into the sales of the country’s largest power equipment maker.
Electricity generation in Asia’s third-largest economy has been hit by shortages of coal and gas that have left power stations running below their normal capacity. Delays in bureaucratic approvals and land acquisition, as well as populist rating regimes that force companies to sell at a loss, have also hit power corporations, denting their appetite for new projects.
BHEL’s net income fell to Rs. 456 crore in the financial second quarter to September thirty, from Rs. 1,270 crore in the same period last year. Analysts had forecast a net income of Rs. 743 crore for the quarter, according to Thomson Reuters information.
BHEL’s order book stood at about Rs. 1.02 100000 crore at the end of September, the corporate said in a statement.
Shares in BHEL, which had a market price of about $5.6 billion, fell as much as 2 per cent after the earnings were announced, but they later recovered and were up 1.3 % at 0830 gmt in a market that was down 0.25 %.
In the first quarter of this financial year, BHEL’s net income had dropped 49 per cent and prompted Deutsche Bank to downgrade the corporate to a ‘sell’ rating.
