The early trend in the March 2018 quarter results season looks encouraging though driven by large companies such as Reliance Industries (RIL), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, and Wipro.Net sales of a sample of 113 companies that declared results for the quarter grew by 16.9 per cent year-on-year while net profit rose by 3.9 per cent. Excluding banks and financial companies, sales growth improved to 17.5 per cent and net profit growth shot up to 9.6 per cent.However, Reliance Industries (RIL), India’s largest company by profits, has a strong influence on the sample trend. It reported Rs 1.2 lakh crore in revenue and Rs 9,435 crore in net profit for the March quarter.Excluding results of banks, finance companies, and RIL, the sample’s sales increased by 9.4 per cent and net profit grew by 7.1 per cent. RIL contributed 41.1 per cent to net sales and 31.4 per cent to net profit of the sample without banks and finance companies.The 13 companies from the information technology (IT) sector also had a significant share of 24.3 per cent in sales and 43.2 per cent in net profit of the sample. RIL and IT companies together formed two-thirds of the topline and three-fourths of the bottomline of the sample.63967658

In the coming weeks, the sample trend is likely to moderate as more results from companies in sectors including capital goods, construction, power, realty, and telecom are declared. These sectors have reported depressed performance in the past few quarters. 63967016 63966441 63966491