Grasim Inds

The company has reported a set of flat numbers for Q4FY13. Consolidated net revenue rose just 5% at Rs.7672 crore. EBITDA was down 5% at Rs.1786 crore.  An exceptional income of Rs.204 crore came in by exiting from its unrelated business by disinvestments of shares in Alexandria Carbon Black and Thai Carbon Black. Thus net profit was flat at Rs.818 crore, up just 1% and of this, Rs.454 crore was from Ultra Tech Cement. Grasim holds 60.3% stake as of March 2013 in Ultra Tech. In terms of segment, viscose staple fibre (VSF) global prices declined 10%  and the performance of the company’s pulp JVs was adversely affected due to fall in realisations.

The brownfield VSF expansion at Harihar (Karnataka), has been completed with the commissioning of Phase II (18,250 TPA) in May 2013. The greenfield project of VSF (120,000 TPA) at Vilayat (Gujarat) is nearing completion and is expected to go on stream in the 2nd quarter. Caustic soda plant of 182,500 TPA capacity started commercial production in May 2013. There will be a gradual ramp up in capacity in the first half of FY 2013-14. Work on epoxy project (Vilayat) is progressing, and is likely to be commissioned in September 2013.  A major revamp of the VSF plant at Nagda has started and this was undertaken in phases, spread over the next two years. Poor global outlook and excess capacity in China, is expected to keep the VSF industry under pressure in the short term.