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Earnings Recovery May Stay Elusive In Fourth Quarter

The much-touted earnings recovery may falter in the fourth quarter.

Signage for the CNX Nifty Index is displayed as employees walk through the atrium of the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. (NSE) building in Mumbai.
Signage for the CNX Nifty Index is displayed as employees walk through the atrium of the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. (NSE) building in Mumbai.

The much-touted earnings recovery may falter in the fourth quarter.

Nifty’s earnings per share, an indicator of profitability of its constituents, stands at Rs 63.3 for the three months ended March after 20 of the 50 companies in the index reported quarterly numbers. BloombergQuint’s calculations based on analyst estimates show that the remaining 30 will report an EPS of Rs 52.4.

That’s if all of them meet forecasts. So far, 10 reported results in line, and five each fell short and beat estimates.

Earnings Recovery May Stay Elusive In Fourth Quarter
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The estimated Rs 115.7 EPS for January-March is over 9 percent lower than the previous quarter and about 5.5 percent higher than the year-ago period.

Which means a double-digit growth for the entire 2017-18 is highly unlikely. For the nine months ended December, Nifty EPS stood at Rs 356. It’s now expected to be around Rs 471.7 for the full year, implying a growth of 8.8 percent.

Earnings Recovery May Stay Elusive In Fourth Quarter