Walchandnagar Inds drops on Q3 loss

The stock price has taken a beating today on the back of its poor show for Q3. The stock is down 4% at Rs.153.50 and remains firmly in the red.

This 109 years old company has been in the limelight ever since the defence sector was opened up as the main focus of this heavy engineering company is defence. And companies which depend on orders from government, surely face a lot of ups and downs, depending on the vagaries of the Govt orders. In FY14, the company had set itself a target of Rs.1000 crore turnover by FY17. That is surely not happening, at least in this current fiscal.

The company has had a dismal Q3FY17 with reverse turnaround, which in simple parlance means it has posted a loss vis-à-vis the profit in previous Q3. Net loss for the quarter was at Rs.17 crore v/s profit of Rs.4 crore (YoY). It had a loss of Rs.14 crore in Q2. A 22% (YOY) drop in total income at Rs.100 crore and a huge interest outgo – 20% of income earned and up 25% sequentially is what did it in. Though the company managed to bring down costs by 11%, it did not help much – EBITDA was down 68% at Rs.9 crore.