Sebi To Plug Insider Trade Gaps

Ciba Speciality Chemicals India (Ciba) will move the manufacturing of performance polymers to Petro Araldite, now that it has started operations. This will result in higher operational efficiency and Ciba will now concentrate on making additives and consumer-care products at its Goa plant.

The 30,000 tonne per annum epoxy resins plant will cut down on imports reducing the risk of exchange-rate fluctuations. Having a local supplier will also result in better inventory management.

In September 1997 it hived off its textile dyes business and its domestic pigments business to Indian Dyestuff Industries in May 1998 to joint ventures with Indian Dyestuff Industries. The transfer of these businesses resulted in only a marginal drop in turnover indicating that its other business segments grew at faster rates. Moreover, its margins have improved towards the year end with an improvement in margins to six per cent in 1998-99 from about five per cent in the previous year. This is a significant improvement considering that its operations are dominated by a high level of traded products, with finished goods purchases accounting for nearly 88 per cent of material costs and nearly 52 per cent of its materials are imported.

Additives and consumer-care products are its chief strengths and the next few years will see these segments deliver resulting in healthy sales growth, according to Crisil RatingScan, May 1999. There has been a perceptible improvement in operating margins in the fourth quarter of 1998-99 which if sustained over the next few quarters will see a substantial improvement in the current year performance. The commissioning of a new plants for anti-oxidants could see further improvements in performance.

Trent

The stock markets have given a guarded response to Trent's (earlier Lakme) maiden result as a retailing company. The results reflect the effect of the merger of the retailing subsidiary of Trent with erstwhile Lakme. It has made a profit before tax of about Rs 3 crore on an annualised basis and its net profit of Rs 16 crore for the year is chiefly due to other income component of Rs 10.2 crore which is due to the huge investible surpluses from the sale to HLL.

If one were to take a pre-tax EPS for the sake of simplicity, it would work out to about Rs 2.3 which when compared to its pri