Despite an erratic monsoon impacting its India business, agro-chemical giant UPL Ltd reported an 18 per cent increase in net profit and 24 per cent growth in revenues for the quarter ended December 2021, over same period last year, on robust performance in other regions.
Net profit for December quarter stood at ₹937 crore on revenues of ₹11,297 crore as against a net of ₹793 crore on revenues of ₹9,125 crore in the same period last year.
UPL’s December quarter performance witnessed a healthy volume growth of 11 per cent and 13 per cent increase in product realisations.
In a statement the company said in-house manufacturing coupled with backward integration linkages supported by effective raw material sourcing and overall cost management helped maintain the EBITDA margins despite overall increase in input costs and sharp rise in freight rates.
“UPL delivered another quarter of strong business performance in a challenging environment with growth across all regions except India. We are confident of continuing this business momentum and ending the fiscal year 2022 on a strong note,” Jai Shroff, CEO, UPL Ltd said in a statement.
December quarter revenues from India operations were flat at ₹907 crore as compared to ₹906 in the same period last year. The high sales returns in kharif and erratic monsoon adversely impacted sales volume in India, UPL said. However, the company witnessed strong growth in North America, Europe, Latin America and other geographies.
UPL announced a new strategic partnership with Bunge in Brazil during the quarter.
“We also undertook multiple initiatives to re-imagine sustainability and in Q3, we successfully raised a sustainability loan of $700 million. At the same time, furthering our commitment to the Gigaton challenge, our digital platform ‘nurture.farm’ successfully completed its Crop Residue Management Program, thereby preventing release of over 1 million tons of carbon emissions,” Shroff said.
The UPL scrip was trading 1.57 per cent higher at ₹802.95 on the bourses post earnings announcement on Monday.