Category: Breaking Corporate India Earnings News

The board of Zenith Birla India has considered a proposal to hive off the company’s tools manufacturing division.

The board discussed the proposal of de-merger / hive off of tools division at length. After having discussion at length, it was decided to obtain detailed study report from an independent consultant for the purpose before finalizing any proposal.

The board also considered the proposal of merger / acquisition of Tungabhadra Holdings which is also into the manufacturing of steel pipes and with its operations at Murbad and Tarapur and having synergy with the steel pipes business of Zenith.

Unity Infraprojects has received orders aggregating to Rs 134.15 crore. Construction of shopping centre at Koregaon Park, Pune from Anuttam Developers with the total contract value of Rs 112.40 crore to be completed by the company within 17 months.

The company has been awarded the contract for construction of BIG MALL, Thane form Serendipity Buildtech, New Delhi with a contract value of Rs 21.75 crore.

The Godrej Properties-L&T joint venture (JV) will reportedly bid for the redevelopment of all the five sectors of Dharavi, which the government has identified. The JV has already submitted the expression of interest (EoI) to bid for the project.

The project includes replacing 57,000 slum structures spread over 500 acres. The entire area has been divided into five sectors of about 1.5 crore squre feet (sq ft) each. The project is expected to generate close to Rs 25,000 crore for the Maharashtra government.

The interested companies will be allowed to bid for as many sectors as they like. Each bidder will get only one sector to develop. Selected companies will then rehabilitate slum-dwellers in about 60 lakh sq ft in each sector while the remaining area can be sold commercially.

Two other Mumbai-based developers, Housing Development and Infrastructure (HDIL) and Akruti Nirman, have reportedly formed JVs with Lehman Brothers and Limitless, an arm of Dubai World, to bid for Dharavi.

Larsen & Toubro’s ECC division in consortium with Outotec GmbH, Germany have bagged a Rs 762 crore sinter plant order from Steel Authority Of India (SAIL). This plant of 2 X 204 square metre grate area with a capacity of 3.80 million ton per annum is to be executed on a turnkey basis at the IISCO steel plant (ISP) of SAIL, at Burnpur, West Bengal.

The order value for the company is Rs 639.99 crore and Euro 22.08 million for Outotec. The new sinter plant will be part of SAIL’s ambitious programme of expanding its capacity at ISP by 2.5 MTPA crude steel. The turnkey sinter plant project is to be completed in 29.5 months.

Outotec’s scope covers basic engineering, supply of proprietary and special equipment as well as technical services while the Company’s scope covers detail engineering, supply of indigenous mechanical, electrical and instrumentation works and complete site services including civil, structural and erection works.

Reliance Industries (RIL) is reportedly entering shipbuilding and dredging business with two separate companies. It plans to invest around $1 billion each in two companies and has begun talks with international majors for a strategic tie-up for the dredging business. The shipyard will come up at Rewas, where RIL is setting up a mega port and a special economic zone (SEZ). The company is also looking at a ship repair yard at Kakinada for servicing offshore/platform vessels and rigs.

Separately, the empowered group of ministers have approved the pricing formula proposed by Reliance Industries (RIL) for its Krishna-Godavari (K-G) basin gas, with minor modifications that reduced the delivered price of gas. The revised formula lowers the proposed price of the gas at Kakinada to $4.20 per million British thermal unit (mmBtu) from $4.33 mmBtu that was proposed by RIL. The price at which RIL will sell its gas from the KG basin to consumers will be valid for five years, after which it will be open for revision.

Suzlon Energy is reportedly planning to invest around 1 billion euro (Rs 5,600 crore) to nearly triple its production capacity by 2009. The expansion plan would raise Suzlon’s turbine production capacity in India from 2,700 mega watt (MW) now to 5,700 MW by the close of fiscal March 2009.

The report suggested that company also plans to raise its capacity to produce wind gearboxes, made by its unlisted Belgian subsidiary Hansen Transmissions, to 9,300 MW by 2009.

Suzlon’s order book stands at around $3.5 billion, up from $3.3 billion in July 2007, with most of the orders from outside India.

At the current price of Rs 1392.85, the scrip trades at a PE multiple of 112.05, based on Q1 June 2007 annualised EPS of Rs 12.43.