Birla 3m Posts It

Price on 29/01/98: Rs 175

Price on 06/02/98: Rs 191

Yash Birlas decision to divest 25 per cent stake from his 32.7 per cent holding in Birla 3M to 3M corporation has pushed up the scrip by 9.14 per cent in a week. Its total equity capital amounts to Rs 11.27 crore and 51 per cent is held by the foreign partner. With the divestiture, the stake will go up to 76 per cent and 3M will probably buy the shares at a premium.

The company is into a range of products including cable connectors, telecommunication equipment, power distribution equipment, leather treatment equipment, packaging equipment and healthcare products. Scotchprint, an electronic graph system, is one of the new products launched by the company. In fact, it is going to set up its second manufacturing unit in Pune in this calendar year. It is expanding its capacity and diversifying into related and intermediate products, most of them being import-substitutes. This is part of its $50 million expansion plan into various categories of products. It has posted good results in 1996-97 wherein, the net profit has gone up by 16.47 per cent over Rs 2.01 crore in 1995-96.