sectors including automobiles and ancillaries chemicals finance oil marketing reported lacklustre numbers in the december quarter et intelligence group india inc was able to clock a doubledigit revenue growth for the fifth consecutive quarter in the three months to december 2018 but this was at the expense of profits and profitability the pressure on margins and on the bottomline is expected to remain in the next two quarters amid slack demand and volatile input pricesfor a 13quarter common sample of 2471 companies excluding banks and finance companies net sales increased by 178 per cent yearonyear while net profit fell by 331 per cent the sharpest fall in nine quarters the quarterly profit was marred by a net loss of rs 26961 crore by tata motors owing to asset impairment when adjusted for the loss net profit of the sample fell by 74 per cent after showing a doubledigit growth in the previous two quarters advt operating margin dropped by 220 basis points bps 100 bps 1 per cent to a sevenquarter low of 137 per cent the fall was inevitable given a higher increase of 20 per cent in aggregate expenses compared with the topline growthtopline growth was chased by a whole host of companies sometimes at the cost of margins inventory losses due to crude price fluctuations marred the performance of quite a few companies said deepak jasani research head hdfc securitiesalso read industrial production grows at 24 in december on the back of manufacturing uptickafter including banking and finance companies the samples sales grew at a similar rate of 175 per cent the fall in net profit was lower at 261 per cent reflecting a recovery posted by some banks at the bottom line following lower slippages of assets to nonperforming assets and hence lower provisioningamong small and midcapstocks struggle was visible at both the topline and bottom line high competitive intensity disruption due to technological and regulatory changes and liquidity squeeze seem to have affected them said jasani doubledigit topline growthanother worrisome trend is that more sectors are now showing stress apart from sectors such as infrastructure power realty and telecom which have been under stress for quite some time sectors including automobiles and ancillaries chemicals finance oil marketing reported lacklustre numbers in the december quarterwith no major signs of turnaround in demand scenario the weak trend is expected to continue in the next couple of quarters as the country gears up for the general elections going by the recent numbers of auto sales and importexport data we think the march 2019 and the june 2019 quarters may also be challenging after that once the new govt settles in we may see resurrection of sentiments new policy guidelines and fresh momentum in the economy said jasani advt by ranjit shinde shailesh kadam et bureau published on feb 18 2019 at 0811 am ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment comment now comments comment now read comment 1 all comments post