The street is expecting good set of numbers from Ambuja Cements. The standalone revenues are expected to grow by 7-7.5 percent odd. The operating profit is likely to jump up by around 38 percent suggesting that the margin expansion is going to be to the tune of around 400 basis points.

However, the net profit is likely to see degrowth because in the base year there was a tax credit.

The crucial number to look at would be sales volumes. CNBC-TV18 is expecting the number to be around 6.3 million tonnes. However, the street is divided here because some of them like Emkay are expecting 6.5 million tonnes, while HSBC is around 6.1 billion tonnes.

The big question is what is helping them to report volume growth when the the industry is not growing?

The company has no exposure to south India because that region had seen immense pain in terms of demand as well as pricing and that’s why realisations for the company are expected to spike up by nearly 4-5 percent on a year on year basis. Moreover, they have good amount of exposure to north India, west as well as central India and that is what will support their realisations.

Margins are expected to look good on low base, realisations would be higher. The prices of Input costs like that of coal and petcoke have also declined.

Therefore, one can expect good set of numbers from Ambuja Cements. However, these are standalone because the consolidated numbers would include ACC’s numbers as well.

First Published:Feb 20, 2020 11:44 AM IST