Stocks to Watch: Zomato, Tata Consumer Products, Lupin, Trent, Nestle

Zomato: Online food delivery firm Zomato will be reporting its financial results on February 8 for the quarter ended on December 31, 2023. As per brokerages, the food delivery platform is expected to post resilient numbers. According to brokerage firm Kotak Institutional Equities, revenue is likely to have grown 61% year-on-year (YoY). “ We expect 3QFY24 revenue growth to come in at 61% YoY, driven by 45% YoY growth in food delivery revenues (29% YoY growth in GMV and 70 bps yoy take rate expansion), 89% YoY growth in Hyperpure revenues and 106% YoY growth in Blinkit revenues. Our food delivery GMV growth assumption implies 8% sequential growth," it said. Meanwhile, brokerage company JM Financial projects a sequential GOV growth of 7 percent in food delivery.

Tata Consumer Products: The FMCG firm on Wednesday reported a 17.26% decline in its consolidated net profit to ₹301.51 crore in the December quarter on account of lower contributions by associate and joint venture firms. The consolidated profit before exceptional items and tax of the Tata Group FMCG arm was up 27.12% to ₹513.27 crore in the October-December period against ₹403.75 crore of the corresponding quarter a year ago. The company had posted a consolidated net profit of ₹364.43 crore in the December quarter a year ago. Its revenue from operations rose 9.47% to ₹3,803.92 crore during the quarter under review against ₹3,474.55 crore in the year-ago period.

Lupin: The pharmaceutical major posted a massive surge of 300% in consolidated net profit at ₹613 crore in Q3FY24, compared to ₹153.4 crore in the year-ago period, driven by record-high sales on strong growth across geographies. This is the fourth straight quarter when profit has more than doubled for the company. Lupin's total revenue from operations for the quarter rose 20.2% to ₹5,197.4 crore, compared to ₹4,322 crore in the same period last year. On the operating front, Lupin's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) during the December quarter rose 95% to ₹1,038 crore, compared to ₹533 crore in the year-ago period.

Trent: The Tata group company reported a 140% year-on-year (YoY) jump in its net profit for Q3FY24 at ₹370.6 crore, compared to a net profit of ₹154.8 crore in the same quarter last year. Revenue in Q3FY24 rose by 50.5% to ₹3,466.6 crore from ₹2,303.4 crore, YoY. The company’s EBITDA for the quarter spiked 95% to ₹629 crore from ₹323.2 crore, while EBITDA margin improved by 410 basis points (bps) to 18.1% from 14%, YoY. Trent share price jumped more than 19% after the announcement of Q3 results. The stock spiked as much as 19.26% to ₹3,618.95 apiece on the BSE.

Nestle India: Nestle India on Wednesday reported a net profit of ₹655.61 crore for the quarter ended December 2023, registering a growth of 4.4% compared to ₹628.06 crore in the same quarter last year. The company’s revenue in Q4CY24 grew 8% to ₹4,600.42 crore from ₹4256.79 crore, year-on-year (YoY). The company said that strong growth momentum in e-commerce and out-of-home channels drove an 8.9% increase in domestic sales, which was supported by price and mix growth. However, on a sequential basis, net profit slumped 27.8% from ₹908.08 crore in Q3CY24, and the FMCG major's revenue from operations was down 8.7% from ₹5036.82 crore.

Power Grid Corporation: The state-owned company on Wednesday reported a 10.5% year-on-year (YoY) increase in net profit at ₹4,028.3 crore for Q3FY24, compared to a net profit of ₹3,645.3 crore it had earned in the corresponding quarter last year, the company said in a regulatory filing. The company's revenue from operations increased 2.6% to ₹11,549.8 crore as against ₹11,261.8 crore in the corresponding period of the preceding fiscal. At the operating level, EBITDA grows 3.2% to ₹10,212.9 crore in the third quarter of this fiscal over ₹9,893.5 crore in the corresponding period in the previous fiscal. The company's board of directors has approved the payment of the second interim dividend of ₹4.50 per equity share of ₹10 each for FY24, to be paid on March 5, 2024.

Larsen & Toubro: The EPC company's power transmission and distribution business bagged large orders in the Indian and Middle East markets on Wednesday, it said in a filing to BSE. The business has secured an order to set up a 75 MW floating solar photovoltaic plant on a dam as a part of the ultra mega renewable energy power park being developed on Damodar Valley corporation reservoirs in Jharkhand and West Bengal. In Saudi Arabia, the company has bagged an order for turnkey construction of a substation. “The business has also won substation and voltage conversion orders from hydrocarbon companies in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In an ongoing 220 KV Power Supply Project in the UAE, an additional order has been secured."

Mankind Pharma: The promoters of Mankind Pharma on Wednesday revealed their plans to reduce their shareholding between February 8 and February 15 to meet the minimum public shareholding requirements. The promoter group members, including Sheetal Arora, Arjun Juneja and Puja Juneja, will seek to decrease their stake from the current 76.5 percent to 74.88 percent to comply with the minimum shareholding norms, says an exchange filing.

Larsen & Toubro: The engineering and construction major is facing challenges in finding the right buyer for its 1,400-megawatt Nabha power plant in Punjab. However, the company is in no haste to sell the asset and will wait for the right valuation, the company’s chief financial officer R. Shankar Raman told Mint. Similarly, the company will wait for the financials of its Hyderabad Metro project to improve before considering a sale. Despite having potential buyers, the current valuations do not meet L&T's expectations, Raman said. The Hyderabad Metro, another non-core asset of L&T, was put up for sale in 2021. However, the company is currently focussing on improving the project’s financial viability to boost its valuations.

Vodafone Idea: The telecom company has asked for the government to create a subsidy scheme to encourage migration of feature phone users to smartphones through the respective operators, and disregard demands for shutting down 2G networks that serve poor consumers. The subsidy can be funded through the Universal Services Obligation Fund or the Digital Bharat Nidhi, Vodafone Idea said in its submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) that is holding consultations on digital transformation through the 5G ecosystem. Bharti Airtel MD Gopal Vittal on Tuesday also said that 2G networks would disappear over the next few years.