Shares of tobacco and FMCG major ITC have underperformed for the past several years even as the company’s CMD Sanjiv Puri said the company has been performing well and pledged to take several steps to create more shareholder value.

“Shareholder value is on top of our minds,” Puri said, adding that he was surprised by the way the stock has behaved in the market. ITC has fallen from a peak of Rs 340 levels reached in July 2017 to about Rs 170 now.

“In the last 3 years, our earnings per share (EPS) have gone up by 47 percent. Our return on segment capital has gone up from 61 percent to 72 percent,” he said.

Talking about the company’s businesses, he said, “Each of our businesses, I am talking about older businesses, are leaders in their segment whether its paper, agriculture, hotels; they are leaders in quality of product and services, they are leaders in terms of superior financial matrix. That demonstrates that our fundamentals are strong. We have robust cash flows, we are debt free and we have good quality of governance, but for some reason this is not getting reflected in the stock price.”

He also talked about the steps the company will take to help create shareholder value.

Watch video for more.