Exide Industries : Net Profit Dropped By 25.5% In Q3FY14

Exide Industries (EIL), today (13 January 2014), posted its December quarter result for FY14, which was not as per the street estimates. The company posted a drop of 11% on revenue front  to Rs 1304 on yearly basis. The sales of EIL disappointed for the third quarter in continuation in current fiscal.  This is primarily due to the slowdown in both the automotive as well as industrial batteries segment. In the automobile segment, both the OEMs and the replacement markets demand for the batteries remained sluggish. Also, in the industrial batteries market, the consumption of infrastructure, motive power, telecom and inverter batteries remained under pressure and continued to be slow-moving.

Looking at the depressed demand of batteries industry, the company had cut down its expenditure during the quarter and cost of raw material has come down by 15% from Rs 1099 crore in Q3FY13. This is down from 74% of sales at the end of Q3FY13 to 70.73% for the recently concluded quarter. While, its total operating expenditure stood at Rs 1161 crore decreased by 10% on YoY.

Led by the poor sales in Q3FY14, EIL’s EBITDA slumped by 13% to Rs 142.6 crore on yearly basis. Even the EBITDA margins has taken a hit and is down by 31 basis points to 10.94% for Q3FY14.

The net profit also, posted a sharp decline in third quarter of FY14. It dropped by 25.5% to Rs 77.52 crore against Rs 104.1 crore in the same period in last fiscal. 

Reacting to the distressing Q3 result of EIL, its stock price closed 6% down at Rs 105 in today’s trade.