Prism Johnson

On the face of it, it seems like Prism Cement has posted a turnaround performance for Q4FY15 with a net profit of Rs.62 crore v/s loss of Rs.41 crore in Q3 and net profit of Rs.11 crore in previous Q4. Even for FY15, there has been a turnaround from loss of Rs.86 crore to a consolidated net profit of Rs.3 crore. But this is thanks to the exceptional gain of Rs.62 crore – sale of 1.23 crore shares held in Prism Trust. Without this, the company would have surely ended the quarter once again in the red. In fact Profit before tax and exceptional gain was a loss of Rs.3 crore.

Otherwise, the overall performance has been disappointing. Net sales was almost flat at Rs.1527 crore, with EBITDA coming down 29% (YoY) at Rs.89 crore and margins slipped from 7.81% to 5.8%. The only silver lining here is that power and fuel cost was down 8% despite overall cost being up 2% and this was because it started using imported coal to bring down costs. It took other initiatives too to bring down cost but all that was negated due to weak demand and sluggish prices.

The company has three segments – cement, TBK which is HR Johnson making tiles, bath and kitchen and the third is Ready Mix Concrete. All three segments did poorly. Cement showed a 5% drop in revenue and 29% drop in EBIT; TBK showed a 6% rise in topline but posted a loss and RMC showed a flat sales but EBIT dropped 36%.