Half of active cos on BSE not to declare unaudited results

Ripples of India’s largest corporate scam along with poor quarterly performance have made more than half of the actively traded companies on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) opt not to disclose their fourth quarter un-audited results this month. Instead, they would announce only their annual audited results, before the end of June.

About 1,418 companies out of the actively traded 2,800 companies on the BSE have taken the option of not declaring their unaudited results as against 874 last year, an increase of 62 per cent.

Tata Motors, Hindalco, National Aluminium Company and Grasim are some of the large companies that had announced their un-audited fourth quarter results last year but have decided not to do so this year.

“Auditors are more cautious this time; they are looking into the numbers more closely,” said Kaushik Dutta, partner, Price Waterhouse. “Even the board of the companies and audit committees are more cautious this time,” he said.

On January 7, B Ramalinga Raju, founder chairman of Satyam Computer Services, which one time claimed to be the fourth-largest software exporter from India, admitted to falsifying earnings and assets in the biggest corporate scandal in the country. Price Waterhouse & Co (PwC), accountants for Satyam Computers, have come under scanner for not being able to unearth such a large fraud despite signing the accounts of the company for more than three years.

The Securities and Exchanges Board of India (Sebi), the capital markets regulator, has made it mandatory for companies to announce their unaudited results on a quarterly basis, excluding for the last quarter. For the last quarter, it gives the companies the option of announcing audited annual results within three months of the end of the financial year.

“Poor performance could be one of the reasons why companies are not in a hurry to announce their fourth-quarter results,” said Sanjiv Agrawal, partner, Ernst and Young, global accountancy and management consultancy firm. “During the bull run of the stock markets, most companies were keen to announce the unaudited fourth quarter results,” he said.

Companies largely from automobile, auto ancillary, housing construction, airlines and metal industries have opted for this option this year.