Listed companies surprise with record profits in Q2; pandemic, lockdown could not stop firms’ success

The adverse effect of the coronavirus pandemic could not stop the progress of India’s listed companies, instead, those companies registered a record profit in the quarter ending September 2020. Net profit, which had declined by 74.7 per cent in the June quarter, recorded a multi-fold increase in the September quarter at 263 per cent sequentially, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. The net profit has zoomed despite a marginal fall in the topline — gross revenue or gross sales. The topline of the listed companies fell by around 5.7 per cent in Q2, compared to a fall of 27.3 per cent in Q1. The data is based on the Q2 financial statements of 1,897 companies as of 11 November 2020.

The companies together generated Rs 1.3 lakh crore of net profit during Q2, which is the highest net profit generated by the listed companies during any quarter in the past. In fact, it is 25 per cent higher than the highest profit ever made by these companies in any past quarter. The highest profit made by these companies in the past was Rs 1.06 lakh crore in the quarter ended June 2019, CMIE underlined. 

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Meanwhile, the fall in salaried jobs in the lockdown months had severely hit all corners of the Indian job market but most of the impact was taken up by the unlisted companies and the unorganised sector where 90 per cent of such jobs exist. The fall in employment in listed companies is likely to be less than 3 per cent during the first half, said the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). This reflects the remarkable resilience of jobs in the listed companies even during the lockdown as according to the survey, the overall fall in salaried jobs during the first half was around 20 per cent, it added.