Redington (India) Limited, which is an end to end supply chain solutions provider in the IT and digital lifestyle products sectors, has expressed confidence that Apple’s plans to enhance its business in India would benefit the company and it would maintain the "leadership position in future as well".
The shares of Redington, a major Apple distributor in India, took a knock following reports that Apple was looking to appoint another distributor to sell its products in the country in addition to Redington and Ingram but bounced back from the lows at the close, though still down by nearly 7 per cent.
In a communication to the stock exchanges, Redington said that the company and Apple, in the past two years, had tasted "great success" in the Mac and iPhone businesses and were working "very closely to maximise growth" in these categories. It said iPhone was poised to grab a higher market share and Redington said it was `closely aligned with Apple in its strategy. It said it would "continue to be the leading distributor for Apple in the period going forward".
Redington indicated that Apple was looking at enhancing its distributorship by stating that in its aggressive plans to achieve significant growth in its iPhone business, "Apple is relooking at its distribution landscape and redefining its customer segments and realign the geographies being addressed’. However, Redington said that the initiatives Apple was taking to expand and enhance its businesses in India "will significantly benefit Redington" leading to the company "continuing at the leadership position in future as well".
The company website says that it was one of the top supply chain solution providers globally to more than 100 leading manufacturers of IT, telecom, life style and consumer electronics products. It has presence in over 24 countries with a distribution network of more than 33,000 channel partners. It was reported that Redington derived a significant portion of its revenue in India from selling Apple’s products.
According to media reports, Apple has snared retail giant Brightstar to market its products in India in an attempt to increase its penetration in the country. Brightstar, the US based company, is part of the Japanese telecom behemoth Softbank. The Japanese internet and telecom giant had recently announced its intention to pump in $ 10 billion in investment in India and has picked up stake in e-commerce portal Snapdeal and Olacabs, the online cab aggregator.
In the quarter ending September 30, 2014, Redington’s revenue was ₹2,815.66 crore and net profit was ₹43.97 crore. The EPS was ₹1.10.
The company has seen the promoters gradually diluting their equity holding in the last three quarters. From 21.03 per cent stake in equity in the quarter ending June 30, 2014, the promoters’ stake came down to 18.34 per cent in Sept and further down to 13.33 per cent in the quarter ending Dec 30, 2014. The FIIs, who raised their holdings in the Sept quarter to 40.32 per cent from 36.38 per cent in the previous quarter, however reduced their stake to 37.27 per cent in the Dec quarter. However, DIIs and others have hiked their stake in the company’s equity in the last two quarters. The shareholding of DIIs increased from 7.70 per cent in the Sept 2014 quarter to 12.59 per cent in the Dec quarter. Others, including retail investors, have also increased their stake during this period- from 33.64 per cent in the Sept quarter to 36.81 per cent in the Dec quarter.
Shares of Redington closed on the NSE at ₹122.50, down by ₹9.25 or 7.02 per cent on the NSE.The stock had touched a high of ₹134.75 and dipped to a low of ₹106.60 before pulling back.