UltraTech reports flat March sales; shares tank 6%

On BSE, stocks of Birla firm closed Rs 104 at Rs 1,743

Shares of UltraTech Cement, India's largest cement manufacturer, tanked 5.65% in today's trade as the company reported flat sales number for the month of March.

The company sold 4.01 million tonne of cement during March against the same sales in the previous corresponding month.

Its cement production, however, rose 2.04% to 4 million tonne during the month compared with 3.92 million tonne in the same month last year. But this could not bring cheer to the counter.

Interestingly, during the same month in 2012, UltraTech had reported a rise of over 6% in its sales (y-o-y) whereas its production was up 4.53%.

On BSE, stocks of Aditya Birla group's cement giant nose dived to close at Rs 1,743.65, down Rs 104.35. During the intra-day session, the counter had slipped over 6.25% till Rs 1,732 before bouncing back.

On a day when Indian benchmark indices lost 1.5% decline, the 52-million tonne cement player took four times higher hit.

With January-March quarter proving to be poor in terms of sales and prices, analysts expect the financial performances of cement companies will be under pressure.

Month of March generally witnesses higher demand for cement. However, this time around the poor demand scenario continued to prevail affecting cement industry's sales number.

On the other hand,  UltraTech's peers ACC and Ambuja were down between 1.8% and 2.2%. Shares of ACC closed at Rs 1,138.30, down Rs 21.1 while Ambuja's traded last at Rs 167.55 or down Rs 3.7 on BSE.