Looking forward to a challenging year, L&T toned down its growth guidance to 15-20 per cent for the fiscal. Announcing its annual results, Mr A.M. Naik , Chairman, said the growth projection was on par with the 25 per cent growth projected by the company last year. The company had achieved a 21 per cent growth in the last fiscal.
The order inflow for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2011-12 was down 30 per cent at Rs 21,159 crore. For FY12 it was 12 per cent lower at Rs 70,574 crore. The order book for the year closed 11 per cent higher at Rs 1,45,723 crore.
Mr R. Shankar Raman, Chief Financial Officer, said this was due to a “combination of deferred bids and lost jobs.” He said margins for the last fiscal were at 11.8 per cent against 12.8 logged in FY11. “The effort is to maintain 12-13 per cent margins. We should factor in a 50 bps point volatility to indicate the conditions in which we are now operating. There are opportunities in the domestic and international markets and we are gearing up to take advantage of it,” he said.
Mr Naik said the aim was to increase market share in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The also company expects to enter Indonesia, Iraq, Brazil and CIS countries in 2013-14. International business contributes 18 per cent currently and the plan is to raise it to 25 per cent and offset any possible shortfall in domestic operations.
Mr K. Venkataramanan, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, said in the hydrocarbon segment there was potential in deep water, upstream and pipelines. The fertiliser segment too holds promise provided urea policy issues were sorted out. In downstream, the prospects were flat as no major investments were expected in the next two to three years.
SEGMENT WISE
The engineering and construction segment revenue was up 23 per cent for quarter at Rs 16,638 crore and for the whole year Rs 46,768 crore, a growth of 23.3 per cent.
The electrical and electronics division's revenue was up 15 per cent at Rs 998 crore for the quarter and 8.4 per cent higher for the year at Rs 3251 crore.
The machinery and industrial products division clocked Rs 740 crore revenue for the quarter and Rs 2775 crore for the fiscal.
On Monday, the L&T scrip closed 1.84 per cent higher at Rs 1159.80 on BSE.