Billionaire Radhakishan Damani’s stake in India Cements has increased marginally. Radhakishan Damani, along with brother Gopikishan Damani, held 21.14 per cent stake in India Cements as on December 31, 2020, up from 20.4 per cent three months ago.
Promoter and promoter Group held 28.42 per cent stake in India Cements as of December 2020, according to a company filing to the exchange.
Speculations were rife over a possible acquisition of controlling stake by Damani family in India Cements, but N Srinivasan, Vice-chairman & Managing Director of the company, had denied such takeover reports earlier.
Damani has not made any official comment on his stake in India Cements so far. India Cements has been maintaining that Damanis’ investments in the company were more of financial in nature than strategic one.
Q2 Net profit jumps
The company had reported a sharp increase in its Q2 profit at ₹.71 crore when compared with ₹.9 crore in Q2 last fiscal, supported by cost control measures, despite lower capacity utilisation levels and fall in cement volumes.
While higher prices helped cement companies to achieve growth in Q2, December 2020 quarter is expected to show a volume-led growth
Sustained demand from individual housing (IHB) in semi urban and rural region and healthy pick-up in infra activities from September 2020 onwards would aid growth in volumes in Q3FY21. In the current fiscal, at all-India level, cement dispatches are expected to report first ever growth during the quarter, according to ICICI Securities.