US prosecutors indict Gautam Adani on bribery charges
The billionaire was charged with participating in a scheme that involved paying more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials.
India’s Hindalco Industries, one of the country’s largest aluminum and copper producers, posted a better-than-expected second-quarter profit on Monday, helped by higher aluminum prices.
The company, owned by the Aditya Birla Group, said its consolidated net profit jumped 78% to 39.09 billion rupees ($463.3 million) for the three months ended Sept. 30, beating estimates.
Analysts, on average, had expected a profit of 34.46 billion rupees, according to data compiled by LSEG.
The demand for metals in the transportation, construction, and packaging industries remained strong this year, with prices of base metals like aluminum and copper rising for the second straight quarter in the July-September period.
The benchmark aluminum and copper prices on the London Metal Exchange rose 20% and 24%, respectively, from the second quarter of last year.
Hindalco’s revenue from operations rose 7.4% to 582.03 billion rupees, while total expenses increased 3.3% to 531.21 billion rupees.
The company recorded a one-time cost of 5.14 billion rupees during the quarter due to expenses tied to production disruption at the Switzerland-based plant of its unit Novelis.
The US IPO-bound aluminum recycler Novelis, which accounts for more than 60% of Hindalco’s overall revenue, incurred a net cash impact of $80 million due to the shutdown of its Switzerland plant from flooding in late June.
Revenue from Novelis rose 5.9%, while the copper segment, the second-largest contributor to Hindalco’s revenue, grew nearly 5.4% during the quarter.
Hindalco sees Chinese imports as an increasing concern, especially if US were to raise tariffs further, said managing director Satish Pai.
“My worry still remains imports from China because the US market is going to get closed for them with the new administration. The only big market left for them, if they have surplus, is going to be India,” Pai said.
Shares of the company closed 0.75% higher ahead of the results. The stock gained 9% in the quarter ended September, against the benchmark Nifty 50’s 7.5% rise.
($1 = 84.3700 Indian rupees)
(By Anuran Sadhu and Neha Arora; Editing by Sumana Nandy, Abinaya Vijayaraghavan and Krishna Chandra Eluri)
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