United Spirits drops after poor Q3 outcome

United Spirits lost 3.76% to Rs 2274.70 at 14:01 IST on BSE after net profit declined 19.4% to Rs 64.92 crore on 5.22% growth in total income to Rs 2351.49 crore in Q3 December 2013 over Q3 December 2012.

The Q3 result was announced after market hours on Thursday, 13 February 2014.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 21.64 points or 0.11% at 20,171.71.

On BSE, so far 95,000 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 2.73 lakh shares in the past one quarter.

The stock hit a high of Rs 2387 and a low of Rs 2254.05 so far during the day. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 2,816.35 on 10 January 2014. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 1,708.20 on 5 April 2013.

The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 13 February 2014, sliding 14.43% compared with the Sensex's 4.45% fall. The scrip had, however, outperformed the market in past one quarter, advancing 0.41% as against Sensex's 0.01% fall.

The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 145.33 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10.

United Spirits said that Q3 December 2013 had seen a slowing of growth in the Prestige and Above segment to 12%, represented by an increase of a million cases over the comparable quarter. For the quarter, Prestige and Above volumes at 8.9 million cases out of an overall volume of 31.4 million cases represents a salience of the upper end at over 28% of the total - a manifestation of the increasing focus on moving the company's customers up the value chain, United Spirits said in a statement.

Delays in the start of the crushing season, as a result of a hardening of the individual positions of the sugar mills and the Government/sugar farmers, has led to a situation of no softening of prices of extra neutral alcohol (ENA), the company's key ingredient, United Spirits said.

Key brands of the company continue to perform well as a result of the company's increasing focus and healthy consumer acceptance, United Spirits said in a statement.

United Spirits said that the company's investments in improving its in-house distillation capability are yielding fruit and production of ENA at the facilities at Pioneer (Maharashtra), Sovereign (Karnataka) and Tern (Andhra Pradesh) are performing satisfactorily. Add-on investments have been made in equipment at these units to comply with the new operating standards for primary distillation units, the company said.

United Spirits is the largest alcohol beverage company in India, having sold 123.70 million cases in the year ended 31 March 2013.

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