(Bloomberg) -- Adani Enterprises Ltd. posted a nearly eight-fold surge in quarterly profit, as a strong show by airports and new energy units offset the drag from coal trading business. Shares rose.
The flagship firm of billionaire Gautam Adani’s empire reported 663% jump in net income to 17.4 billion rupees ($207 million) for the quarter ended Sep. 30, compared with the same period last year, according to an exchange filing Tuesday. There weren’t enough brokerages with profit estimates to derive an average forecast.
Shares of Adani Enterprises, which oversees a motley mix of businesses including airports, roads, data centers and health care, climbed 1.8% in Mumbai after the earnings were announced.
Revenue increased 16% to 226.1 billion rupees while total costs were up 8.2% to 207.9 billion rupees, the filing said.
The revenue from airports business climbed 18% to 22.5 billion rupees while its so-called “new energy ecosystem” housed in Adani New Industries Ltd. jumped 62% to 30.4 billion rupees.
The integrated resource management unit — mostly consists of coal trading and is the biggest topline contributor — slipped 25% to 93.2 billion rupees and continues to be a pain point.
The performance “has been led by Adani New Industries Ltd. and Adani Airport Holdings Ltd with their rapid growth in capacity additions and asset utilization,” Adani, group chairman, said in a post-earnings statement.
‘Turbo Growth’
Adani Enterprises “is poised to repeat this turbo growth across data centers, roads, metals & materials and specialized manufacturing,” he said.
The robust earnings will boost the ports-to-power conglomerate which has resumed its expansion plans, capital spending and acquisition spree to boost its footprint especially in the domestic cement and construction sectors. It spent much of 2023 in damage control mode despite denying Hindenburg Research’s accusations of wide-ranging corporate fraud.
This re-energized growth spree, however, has begun adding to the debt pile. Gross debt surged 52% to 638.6 billion rupees for the September quarter.
The flagship will continue to invest in logistics, energy transition and allied sectors that are core to India’s economic growth, said Adani, Asia’s second-richest person, who often dovetails his corporate strategy to the country’s nation-building priorities.
Known as the group’s incubator for new ventures that are later spun off, Adani Enterprises raised about $500 million through a share sale this month, marking its return to equity markets after Hindenburg’s report had forced it to abort a fund raising plan last year.
But it raised far lesser than the $2 billion approval it got in May, implying it has ample elbow room to tap markets again. On Tuesday, the company said it can also raise up to 20 billion rupees via bonds.
Sebi Probes
Outlining the pending regulatory probes, Adani Enterprises said there have been three show-cause notices from India’s markets regulator alleging non-compliance with laws on related-party transactions, statutory auditor notes and “wrongful categorization of shareholding of certain entities.”
It did not specify if any of these queries from the Securities and Exchange Board of India, or Sebi, were received in the September quarter.
“There is no material non-compliance of applicable laws and regulations and hence there are no material consequences of the allegations” against the Adani Group, the filing said.
Three other group companies — Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone Ltd., Adani Power Ltd. and Adani Energy Solutions Ltd. — also flagged receiving Sebi show-cause notice alleging wrong classification of some shareholders as public shareholders. The firms said they did not see this having any material impact on their earnings.
Here’s a quick overview on how other Adani Group companies fared in the July to September quarter:
--With assistance from Advait Palepu.
(Updates with performance of group companies at the end.)
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