Bajaj Consumer Care zooms 20% on healthy operational performance in Q1

In Q1FY21, EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) margins came at 30.42 per cent against brokerage estimate of around 20.5 per cent.

Shares of Bajaj Consumer Care were locked in the upper circuit band of 20 per cent at Rs 181 on the BSE on Thursday after the company reported a strong operational performance in June quarter (Q1FY21) with EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) margins coming in at 30.42 per cent against brokerages' estimate of around 20.5 per cent. EBITDA margin stood at 30.93 per cent in June 2019 quarter (Q1FY20) and 25.67 per cent in March quarter (Q4FY20).

The personal products company reported a net profit at Rs 54.19 crore in Q1FY21 against Rs 24.52 crore in Q4FY20. The company’s total revenue from operations grew 11 per cent sequentially at Rs 196 crore against Rs 184 crore in the previous quarter. It had posted operational revenue of Rs 240 crore and profit of Rs 58.65 crore in the year-ago quarter, down 18 per cent and 7.6 per cent, respectively.

Edelweiss Securities had expected revenue, EBITDA, and PAT to decline 30.1 per cent, 51.1 per cent and 47.6 per cent, year-on- year (YoY), respectively. Hair oil as a category has been sharply impacted by the lockdown on account of coronavirus. The brokerage firm expected 30 per cent YoY volume decline on a base of 4.7 per cent. No operating leverage will lead to EBITDA margin compression of 880bps YoY, it said.

The management said the company witnessed significant disruptions during the first fortnight of April but since then the company has been able to steadily revive its operations and reverted to near normal business in May and June’20.

The counter has seen huge activities with trading volumes jumping over 8-fold. A combined 11.8 million equity shares changed hands and there were pending buy orders for 350,000 shares on the NSE and BSE at 03:00 pm.

In the last one week, the stock has rallied 25 per cent against 0.85 per cent decline in the S&P BSE Sensex. It, however, underperformed the market in past one year by falling 43 per cent as compared to 7 per cent fall in the benchmark index.