Larsen & Toubro Q4 profit outstrips estimates

By Tommy Wilkes

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Larsen & Toubro Ltd (L&T), India's biggest engineer, outstripped analyst forecasts with a 69 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit, thanks to a steep gain in revenue from its infrastructure and heavy engineering businesses.

The bellwether for India's economic health has spent the past few quarters bolstering its business of building roads, trains, ships and power plant equipment by expanding overseas.

For its effort, net profit from continuing operations reached 27.23 billion Indian rupees ($461 million) in January-March from 16.1 billion rupees a year earlier, L&T said in a statement on Friday. Gross revenue rose 11 percent.

The profit result, which also benefited from divestment during the quarter, compared with the 16.15 billion rupees mean of 15 analysts, according to Thomson Reuters data.

L&T said its order book - a gauge of demand - grew 13 percent on year, and that order intake for the business year ending March 2015 was 20 percent up on the year just ended.

The company also said that, following the election this month of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it is confident the new government will remove obstacles to infrastructure projects to promote economic growth.

Shares of L&T, which have jumped almost 50 percent this year on hopes of post-election economic reform, closed 0.27 percent lower ahead of the release, compared with a flat benchmark index.($1 = 59.0150 Indian Rupees)

(Editing by Christopher Cushing)