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★ Lead Story

Yesterday · 2 min read

India Inc sold the fastest in 15 quarters, and kept less of it

On 16 August, Business Standard published its quarterly tally of 3,458 listed companies for April-June 2026. Combined net sales rose 18.4 per cent from a year earlier, the fastest pace in 15 quarters.

Profit did not keep up. Combined adjusted net profit rose 16 per cent to about Rs 4.58 trillion, from about Rs 3.95 trillion a year earlier. A year ago the same measure grew 8.9 per cent, so the profit line is improving. It is simply improving more slowly than the sales line.

The gap has a name on the cost sheet. High energy prices sat on margins through the quarter, and the growth itself came mostly from mining, metals, banking and finance rather than from the companies that sell to households.

There is a second number worth holding. Sequentially, profit fell 4.4 per cent from about Rs 4.79 trillion in the March quarter. The year-on-year headline is strong, and the quarter-on-quarter direction is down.

For anyone selling to Indian consumers, the composition matters more than the total. When commodity and lending businesses carry the aggregate, the profit pool is being created upstream, where a barrel of oil or a tonne of ore sets the price. Consumer companies sit downstream of exactly those inputs, which is why so many of the July-August earnings calls described volume growth alongside gross margin pressure.

The energy line also explains why the margin squeeze looks broad rather than company-specific. Polymer and packaging costs, freight, and power all move off the same base. A company can pass those costs on, hold price and absorb them, or shrink the pack. Each of those choices is visible to the shopper within a quarter or two.

The question the next quarter answers is whether 18.4 per cent sales growth was a festive build-up or a base effect. If the top line holds through the September quarter while energy costs cool, the profit line catches up. If sales moderate while costs stay where they are, this quarter was the good one.

Today's Top 5

5 stories

Television · 3 days ago

The 12-minute limit on TV advertising is gone

On 14 August, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting notified the removal of the 12-minute per hour cap on non-programme content for television channels. The rule had been in place since 14 August 2006, and split the hour into 10 minutes of advertising and two minutes of channel self-promotion.

The ministry's reasoning was arithmetic. There were 62 channels when the cap was written. There are more than 900 now. Digital platforms, which compete for the same advertising money, never had a ceiling at all.

Television channels had challenged the cap in 2006 and lost. The Delhi High Court held then that there was no constitutional guarantee of profitability or unlimited monetisation of public resources. Twenty years later the government has reached the opposite practical conclusion on its own.

The immediate winner is the broadcaster with inventory it could not sell before. The immediate risk is that more inventory drives the price per spot down, which is what usually happens when supply is uncapped in a market where demand is already shifting to digital. A channel can now run 15 minutes of advertising an hour, but only if someone pays for the extra three.

For advertisers, the interesting variable is the viewer. Television's advantage over digital has been an audience that sits still. Longer breaks test that. If viewing time drops during heavier ad loads, the extra minutes buy reach that is worth less than the minutes that already existed.

EPL · Yesterday

Toothpaste pays the bills, make-up is the growth plan

EPL, the Blackstone-owned packaging company that makes more than 9 billion tubes a year, reported 25 per cent revenue growth for the June quarter and raised its near-term revenue guidance to 16-18 per cent on 16 August. Margin guidance stayed at 20 per cent.

Global chief executive Hemant Bakshi described the business as two engines. Oral care, where EPL holds roughly 35 per cent of the world market for toothpaste tubes, grows in the middle to high single digits and rarely surprises anyone. Beauty and cosmetics, where its share is about 8 per cent, could grow around 20 per cent.

His demand argument is a consumption number. An average Indian woman uses two or three beauty products a day. In Korea the figure is close to eight. EPL is planning to double its personal care packaging share from 8 per cent to 16 per cent over four to five years on the belief that the Indian number moves up.

The cost passage in the same interview is the more useful disclosure. Polymer-based raw material prices roughly doubled during the June quarter on the back of the West Asia situation. During the pandemic EPL absorbed that kind of inflation and lost margin. This time it passed the entire increase to customers.

That is a supplier telling you where pricing power now sits in the personal care chain. The tube maker recovered its costs in full, which means the brand on the tube either absorbed the increase or moved it to the shelf. Watch pack sizes in the shampoo and face-cream aisle over the next two quarters.

Real Estate · Yesterday

Housing sales cooled because there was less to buy

India's largest listed residential developers reported softer pre-sales for the June quarter, according to a 16 August review. The reasons given were delayed approvals, fewer launches and a high base from a year earlier, rather than buyers walking away.

Brigade Enterprises is the clean illustration. Sales bookings fell 5 per cent to Rs 1,061 crore. Volume fell much harder, down 22 per cent to 0.74 million square feet. Average realisation rose 21 per cent to Rs 14,256 per square foot, which is what carried the value line while the volume line dropped.

Lodha Developers, meanwhile, has told investors it plans 21 launches worth about Rs 24,000 crore across the remaining three quarters of this financial year. Supply is being held back, not cancelled.

A market where volume falls 22 per cent and price rises 21 per cent is not a weak market. It is a thin one. Fewer homes are changing hands, and the ones that do sit higher up the price ladder, which is the same pattern visible in cars, jewellery and appliances this year.

The risk in that pattern is timing. If the withheld supply arrives in the second half as planned, the December and March quarters will look strong for reasons that have nothing to do with demand improving. Comparing those quarters with this one will flatter everybody.

Amber · Yesterday

An air-conditioner maker is about to build your phone

Amber Enterprises, best known for making air conditioners for other brands, told its earnings call on 16 August that it will begin trial production of Oppo, OnePlus and Realme smartphones by the March 2027 quarter, with commercial production from the June 2027 quarter.

The scale plan is 8 million units in the first year, ramping to 15-16 million in the second. Amber has already hired a chief operating officer for the mobile business.

The context is a Chinese brand group stepping back from owning Indian factories. Oppo phones are currently made at Vivo's Noida plant, and Vivo is hiving that plant into a joint venture with Dixon Technologies. Both companies have faced Indian enforcement action on tax and foreign exchange matters.

Together, Vivo and the Oppo group brands, including iQoo, Realme and OnePlus, held 45.6 per cent of the Indian smartphone market in the June quarter, on Counterpoint's numbers. Nearly half the phones sold in India are moving to a contract manufacturing model owned by Indian companies while the brand, pricing and software stay Chinese.

Amber flagged one cost it cannot yet control. Copper-clad laminate, the base material for printed circuit boards, keeps rising because artificial intelligence and data centre demand is absorbing supply. Amber is passing the increase on with a lag and plans its own laminate plant only by 2029-30.

ORIX · Yesterday

A Japanese lessor is betting Indians stop buying cars

ORIX Corporation named India one of its two focus growth markets outside Japan, alongside Australia, in an interview published on 16 August. It wants to take its Indian fleet from about 50,000 vehicles to between 1 lakh and 1.5 lakh in the short to medium term.

For scale, ORIX runs about 5 lakh vehicles in Japan and 80,000 in Australia. India is the smallest of the three and the one it expects to move.

The number the whole bet rests on is 3 per cent. That is roughly how much of Indian vehicle sales go through leasing today. Group chief executive Hidetake Takahashi compared the moment to Japan around 30 years ago, when ownership was still the default.

The India head, Vivek Wadhera, added the demand-side reason: as more of the workforce is drawn from a generation that prefers access to ownership, the mindset shift does part of the work for him. That is a familiar argument, and it has been made about Indian consumers for a decade with mixed results.

The supply-side logic is harder to argue with. Takahashi pointed out that tripling the fleet gives ORIX more buying power with manufacturers. In a market where car makers are managing discounts carefully after a record July, a fleet buyer of that size becomes a channel worth pricing for.

⚡ 30-Second Scan

GSK India wants to double revenue to Rs 8,000 crore by FY30, with oncology and adult vaccines named as the growth drivers alongside its general medicines portfolio (16 August).

Cement volumes grew up to 27 per cent last quarter, and fuel and input costs still squeezed margins. Ambuja Cement was the exception on volume, down 14 per cent.

Amazon's updated user agreement pushes most shopper disputes into arbitration, limiting class-action suits while leaving eligible claims to small claims court.

Sourced from public reporting; analysis by The Insight Labs.

Sources: Business Standard, PTI.

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