Category: Breaking Corporate India Earnings News

Indiainfoline in a research note has said additional costs due to H-1B Visa applications and salary hikes will take ~200bps off Infosys’s EBITDA margin in 1QFY09, resulting in a 4% QoQ decline in PAT. Infosys is to release its FY09 guidance on 15 April. Expect FY09 guidance would be revenue growth of 20% and PAT growth of 15% as against consensus estimate of 19%, which means an EPS upgrade cycle is unlikely. Given management’s none-too-encouraging comments in the recent past and clients’ weak business outlook, Infosys could even guide conservatively for a 10% PAT growth. This is really shocking and if that is the case then expect a MASSIVE SELL off in IT stocks.

Now are you shocked that how come H-1B Visa’s can take a toll on its margins ? In 2007, Infosys Technologies processed 1,734 Visa applications excluding BPO, Consluting etc The Visa processing charges + Attorney Fees + Employee Relocation cost will all add up.

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance hosted a conference call to clarify the new business margin calculations on its life insurance business – This was prompted by Prudential plc’s disclosure that its Indian life insurance business (which is a JV with ICICI Bank) had a new business margin of 12%, compared to ICICI Bank’s disclosure that the margin is 19%. We depend on the insurance company to disclose margins – it’s impossible to calculate it ourselves – and if Prudential was correct, this would have reduced life insurance values by 35%.

However, the difference is due to accounting; the underlying margin is closer to 19%. The key reason for the difference in margins is expense ratio assumptions. New business margins reflect the present value of all profits on a particular policy; its calculation requires various assumptions like discount rate, return, expense ratio. For the expense ratio, the correct assumption is to take expenses over the life of the policy – which will imply a meaningfully lower expense ratio compared to the current ratio.

The World’s Largest Coal Gasifier will be Manufactured by an Indian company – L&T and will be supplied to China. Contract valued at Euro 28 million (Rs 170 crore) for supply of the coal gasifier and syngas cooler assembly to Hebi Coal and Electricity, subsidiary of Zhongyuan Coal Chemical Industry Group, People’s Republic of China.

The complete gasifier assembly & the structure, which is expected to weigh 1740 MT, is the world’s largest and heaviest gasifier assembly, with a capacity to handle 3400 tpd of coal. The assembly will be the heart of a methanol plant with a capacity of 600,000 tpa. The order was won through an international competitive bidding process.

We have received Advance Tax Collection Numbers from Various Companies [Thank you] and we are compiling the list of the same. The table below lists the name of the company, followed by Advance Tax paid for the last quarter of previous financial year and Advance Tax paid for the last quarter in current financial year.

Company Previous No Current No. [All figures in Rs crore]
SBI 690 1418
RIL 118 443
TISCO 350 300
HDFC 165 250
BOI 150 191
BOB 50 220
L&T 80 170
UNION BANK 100 130
TATA CHEM 65 90
TCS 20 116
CBI 0 221
ICICI 125 250
M&M 83 116
TATA MOTOR 190 75
IND HOTEL 2 44
DENA BANK 10 50
MRPL 20 100
TATA POWER 0 43
TECH MAHINDRA 5.5 0
INDUSIND BANK 12 19
GUJ AMBUJA 100 175
CASTROL 24 46
ULTRATECH 110 155
BPCL 275 240

Tatat Steel, Tata Motors and BPCL are the only ones reporting a fall in Advance Tax for the last quarter. Since Tech Mahindra is a EoU, we can exclude the same.

The cold rolling mill complex of JSW Steel, Vijayanagar works was inaugurated minutes ago by J J Irani, director Tata Sons and former managing director, Tata Steel. The 1 million tonne CRM complex will cater to the booming automobile and auto component industry and act as a catalyst for attracting further investments in this sector in southern India.

Built in a record time of 22 months, the CRM facility is a forward integration of the existing facilities where hot rolled coils are cold rolled to produce high end cold rolled sheets which cater to the upper segment of the steel market.

Sun TV Network has informed us that the company has launched its FM radio stations at Allahabad and Jabalpur under the brand ‘S FM‘ from 18 March 2008 and 19 March 2008 respectively through its subsidiary South Asia. These stations can be heard at 93.5 MHz frequency in Allahabad and Jabalpur and will cater to the audience of all age groups.

With the launch of these FM stations, the total operational FM stations of Sun TV goes up to 27 as it already operates at Chennai, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli, Visakhapatnam, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Tirupati, Madurai, Tuticorin, Lucknow, Bhopal, Pondicherry, Kozhilkode, Indore, Vijayawada, Varanasi, Tiruchy, Rajahmundry, Kanpur, Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur, Mangalore and Kannur.