Piramal Enterprises group Q2 net jumps 25% to at Rs 480 cr

Piramal Enterprises Thursday reported a 25 per cent year-on-year growth in consolidated net profit at Rs 480 crore for the three months to September, driven by a healthy loan book that clipped at 59 per cent.

The company said its income grew 24 per cent to Rs 3,144 crore during the reporting quarter, over the same period last year and the overall loan book grew 59 per cent to Rs 52,793 crore on robust demand.

The gross non-performing asset (NPA) ratio (based on 90 days past due) stood at 0.5 per cent, and total provisioning at 1.74 per cent.

Its chairman Ajay Piramal attributed the healthy numbers to the strong performance in the financial services business.

"Despite the tight liquidity conditions, we delivered robust performance with the loan book growing 59 per cent to Rs 52,793 crore. Our continued focus on risk management resulted in 0.5 per cent gross NPAs and a 19.6 per cent rerun on equity," he said.

Piramal also announced the appointment of Arundhati Bhattacharya, the former chairperson of State Bank of India, on its board as an independent director.

For Bhattacharya, this is the third board position after her one-year mandatory cooling-off period since the retirement from SBI. Last week, Reliance Industries had appointed her as an independent director. On Wednesday, technology major Wipro also roped her in as an independent director.

The company's pharma services order book saw a significant growth over healthcare insights and analytics revenue, which grew 14.1 per cent to Rs 292 crore, primarily driven by continuing growth in data and analytics segment.

The company said income under share of associates primarily includes its share of profit in Shriram Capital and its share of profit under the joint venture with Allergan, as per the new accounting standards.

Financial services revenue grew 46.7 per cent to Rs 1,732 crore, while pharma revenue inched up 2.5 per cent to Rs 1,109 crore, of which global pharma business contributed as much as Rs 1,029 crore, which was up 6.8 per cent.

The firm's domestic consumer products business revenue declined over 32 per cent to Rs 81 crore, while the healthcare insight and analytics arm reported an income of Rs 292 crore, up 14 per cent.

The Piramal group has operations in 30 countries and brand presence in over 100 countries, with a turnover of USD 2 billion in FY18, of which around 46 per cent generated from outside the country.