Nestle profit before tax marginally dips to Rs 652 crore, revenue up 1.7%

Food major Nestlé India on Tuesday clocked a marginal decline in profit before tax (PBT) to Rs 652 crore for the April-June period versus Rs 659 crore reported a year ago, as Covid-19 disruptions impacted business. 

While revenue for the quarter rose, it was sluggish at Rs 3,050 crore versus Rs 3,000 crore reported a year ago. That’s an increase of 1.7 per cent only from the year-ago period, as supply-chain constraints remained during the quarter. Street estimates had pegged Nestlé’s top line at Rs 3,205 crore for the period under review. 

Net profit for the June quarter rose 11.2 per cent over the year-ago period to Rs 487 crore, against Street estimates of Rs 502 crore. The firms’s operating profit rose 4.9 per cent year-on-year to Rs 747 crore. That is lower than the Rs 790-crore estimate put forth by a poll of analysts by Bloomberg. Operating margins expanded to 24.5 per cent from 23.7 per cent a year ago. 

Nestlé’s domestic sales for the quarter were up 2.6 per cent from a year ago to Rs 2,908 crore, while its exports were down 9.3 per cent to Rs 134 crore.

“The past three months have witnessed volatility, uncertainty and stress that we had neither imagined before nor experienced,” Suresh Narayanan, chairman and managing director, Nestlé India, said. “This led to disruptions across the value chain of the company and has impacted our results, though we have built back momentum strongly, as we ended the quarter,” he said. 

During the lockdown, Nestlé saw demand grow for Maggi, dairy whiteners, packaged milk and coffee, thanks to in-home consumption, which lead to stock-outs at retail outlets.